This article is a transcript from a recorded conversation I had with Anatole
Tartakovsky and Victor Rasputnis – my business partners at Farata Systems.
This conversation took place on the mountain after the day of skiing.
Yakov. There are many ways of creating Web applications and creating them for
the enterprises is not the same as developing a Web site for a pizzeria in
your neighborhood. During the last five years we’ve been using mainly Adobe
Flex for development of the front end of Web applications. Flex applications
work in a well known and predictable run-time environment called Flash
Player. The code is compiled and you have convenient tools for development.
Flex is undergoing “Under New Management” transformations these days.
Even though Flex remains the best framework for development of Web
applications, you can feel the pressure of HTML5. But using just HTM... (more)
During the last month my colleagues and I were immersing into the world of
modern JavaScript frameworks. We didn’t start from scratch though. My
business partners spent the first 5 years of this century porting
PowerBuilder, a used-to-be-popular client server tool, to a JavaScript
framework. That product was called XMLSP and you can still find its 5-year
old version online. The word AJAX was not even invented back then. In 2006, a
killer UI framework Adobe Flex 2 was released and we started using it. It was
clearly better than any AJAX offering, and I was not shy in publishing bl... (more)
A typical Java developer knows that when you need to develop a GUI for a Java
application, Swing is the tool. Eclipse SWT also has a number of followers,
but the majority of people use Java Swing. For the past 10 years, it was a
given that Swing development wouldn't be easy; you have to master working
with the event-dispatch thread, GridBaglayout, and the like. Recently, the
NetBeans team created a nice GUI designer called Matisse, which was also
ported to MyEclipse. Prior to Matisse, JBuilder had the best Swing designer,
but it was too expensive. Now a good designer comes with N... (more)
In any GUI tool, one of the most popular components is the one that shows
data in a table format like JTable in Java or Datawindow in PowerBuilder. The
Adobe Flex 2 version of such a component is called DataGrid. In any UI
framework, the robustness of such a component depends on formatting and
validating utilities as well as a whole suite of data input controls:
CheckBoxes, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, all sorts of Inputs, Masks, and so on.
Using theatrical terminology, the role of the king is played by his
entourage. Practically speaking, touching up the DataGrid is touching up a ... (more)
The recent announcement of iPad has ignited yet another wave of emotional
discussions around the role of Flash Player in the evolution of mankind.
People easily take sides and everyone seems to know what’s right and
what’s wrong. Actually the word ‘’people” is too vague in this
context, because vast majority of the population has no idea what Flash
Player is, and they don’t have to know! As long as they go to youtube and
it plays videos people are happy and casually say, “Youtube is a great
site!”
On the same note, I have no idea how my car operates. Back in my school
days... (more)
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