Adobe is furthering its commitment to HTML5 as the “best technology for enterprise application development” in the long term by turning over Flex SDK 4.6 to the Apache Foundation on Nov. 29.
Adobe recently updated its “Your Questions About Flex" page to include information on what will happen to the program. Earlier this month, the company announced it would cease development on Flash for mobile devices, instead throwing its hat into the HTML5 ring for those deployments. And in August, the company rolled out a public preview of Adobe Edge, a motion interaction design tool for creating animated Web content based on Web standards.
Adobe said in its blog that it is preparing two proposals for incubating Flex SDK and BlazeDS to Apache. It will contribute the core of Flex along with yet-to-be-released components, including ViewStack, Accordion, DateField, DateChooser and an enhanced DataGrid. Additionally, Adobe will be contributing portions of Falcon, a next-generation MXML and ActionScript compiler.
Although Flex has been open source since version 3, Adobe used to own the road map and decide what and when new features would be implemented. Now, members of Apache will provide the leadership and direction for the project.
Adobe reported that it will continue to support applications built with Flex as well as future versions of the SDK running within the Adobe Flash Player. AIR applications will also be supported indefinitely.
Microsoft’s Visual Studio ecosystem numbers 180 partners and counting. On the heels of the Microsoft BUILD conference in September, here’s what you should know about the current tool set, from the forthcoming Visual Studio 11 (now in developer preview) to LightSwitch, Team Foundation Server and Project Server. Plus, there was a look at how third-party plug-ins play nice with Redmond. In the aftermath of BUILD, there’s been a blizzard of words around Redmond’s evolutionary changes to its operating system, development environment and life-cycle tools.
On the negative side: criticism of the Metro-style design, confusion around the positioning of LightSwitch and the status of Silverlight, angst towards the changes to the Windows 8 start menu, and mea culpas over key aspects of C++11 that won’t soon be implemented in Visual Studio.
On the positive: a renewed interest in native code, excitement over its touch-screen-centric style, enthusiasm for massive parallelization with C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), and the touching embrace of Project Server and Team Foundation Server to comprise a full ALM offering, to name just a few.
With a customer base as massive as Microsoft’s, positive and negative chatter is inevitable. Beyond just opinions, there are statistics: The company’s heavily instrumented preview versions of Windows 8, Visual Studio 11, Team Foundation Server and more offer a closely guarded “census,” according to Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky, into actual usage patterns via the opt-in Customer Experience Improvement Program. Sinofsky is just one member of an army of bloggers engaging the often-outraged developers who use Microsoft's tools, taking feedback, debating decisions, and explaining the scientific rationale behind any given change.
In the shadow of Apple founder Steve Jobs’ death, legions of Microsoft developers find themselves wondering if Redmond’s choices will be as world-changing in the next decade as Apple’s were in the last. In addition, a massive ecosystem of ISVs is analyzing the developer preview to pinpoint plug-in offerings of their own. The symbiosis is in full flower; this is your field guide.
HTML5 development powerhouse, appMobi (www.appmobi.com) today announced that on Black Friday (November 25) it will open source key elements of its mobile technology to further accelerate the industry's migration to HTML5. The newly open sourced technology will include the appMobi cross-platform device APIs, which support HTML5 development for both Android and iOS platforms. appMobi will also release the source code for its much heralded “mobiUs” browser, which allows HTML5 Web apps to perform identically to native apps. The bounty of technology made available to HTML5 developers is rounded out with appMobi’s “DirectCanvas” technology, which accelerates HTML5 canvas rendering, physics calculations and sound by as much as 1500 percent, providing native performance to HTML5-based games.
“We believe in the open Web and the importance of an open environment for mobile apps and services,” said appMobi’s CTO, Sam Abadir. “To help advance the industry’s move from native apps to Web-based apps, we are sharing our mobile HTML5 knowledge with the global software development community. Among other benefits, the innovations in this open source release will improve the mobile Web experience through faster downloads, better offline usage and dramatic HTML5 game performance increases. An improved HTML5 user experience is the ‘rising tide that lifts all ships’ for open Web mobile developers, and we are happy to pour our technology into that harbor.”
The open source release of appMobi’s iOS XCode and Android Eclipse projects will be of particular benefit to developers who want to extend existing native apps with HTML5 tabs or views. For example, a developer can easily add a photo sharing feature to a native app by mixing appMobi’s enhanced PhoneGap with Facebook JavaScript APIs. With millions of existing JavaScript components and Web services, the possibilities are limitless.
appMobi will make the source code available this Friday, November 25, in the first ever Black Friday promotion specifically for HTML5 developers. These software projects will join appMobi’s previous open source releases at the GitHub repository. Developers who wish to download the source code can visit appMobi’s website at http://www.appmobi.com/opensource.
RIM has just pushed the BlackBerry PlayBook Native SDK v2.0 out for developers in Beta form. This new version gives developers early access to the Tablet OS 2.0 Beta release, as well as an updated v2.0 Tablet OS Simulator. The other changes in this update include:
- Added Sensors API (magnetometer, gyroscope, and accelerometer support) (device only for now, not available for the simulator at this time)
- Added Payment Service support for subscriptions and in-app purchasing
- IDE improvements in usability, performance, and reliability
- Scoreloop SDK 1.0 Beta 1 is included – try out some social game features for your apps, such as leaderboards
This update brings developers all the tools they need to begin making great Native apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook’s upcoming OS 2.0 rollout. If your a developer and want to grab this SDK, just hit the link below to get started. And a note to consumers, this is a Beta release of software that is meant for developers. If you install it and things stop working for you, don’t blame RIM. It’s a Developer Beta for a reason.