What is the best book out there reagrding Flash Media Server development using flex 4/ Action script. There are many books or resources out there on Flex and action script but nothing specialized on Flash Media Server.
I have yet to find any good definitive guides out there.... I usually end up going and looking at the developer blogs of the Adobe staff at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/
Sorry.. not the answer you were looking for.
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Broad, sweeping question here...
Assume you have built an enterprise level framework with some rich client in the .Net (Microsoft) sphere, with a WCF back end. Now, imagine that that enterprise framework's UI technology is being deprecated in favour of UWP.
The choices for a front end replacement basically are: UWP, Web (HTML), or some other rich client technology.
How would you go about the decision making process?
I personally lean toward a rich client where the user base is a captive user base. I mean, where the users' IT department is happy to install the necessary runtime environment on the machines, etc. This is usually not a problem with Microsoft technologies, and this won't be a problem in about 10 years when organizations roll out Windows 10.
But, people are telling me these days that web has come a long way. People are telling me that JavaScript frameworks are becoming very sophisticated, and that low level JavaScript for basic data binding and the like is mostly unnecessary.
I have really been turned off by web solutions like ASP in the past, but I do understand that technology has moved forward, and I do understand that Microsoft have been working on ASP.Net v Next which might actually be good?
The question is not so much what would you opt for? But, what factors would you take in to account to decide which platform to go for?
Opnion based answer here...
In a decision to adopt a particular tech for any project lies in many factors. I can cite two majors for your particular scenario.
1 - Client adoption. It's easy for the customers to use/install it? They need to pay some sort of license? Can it run in all platforms/devices the customer already own?
2 - Market adoption. It's easy for you co-workers to adopt it? It's hard to find/hire experienced/hardened developers? We need to pay some kind of license? Can I trust it ill be a long lived technology?
The answer to your question can be HTML.
Not only it is already got a lot of momentum in market, it ill take years to change it even if today someone (big like MS or Google) put some new (better) stuff on the table.
Also if someone on MS marketing dep say next week Universal Windows Platform or WinRT must die it ill die (like Silverlight). So Im not adopting some new technology just because some big player told me to do it.
Yes web has come a long way indeed. You can do a lot of amazing things just with JS+HTML+CSS those days. Also the right usage/architecture of it ill allow you to put your app running in PCs, Tablets and Mobiles (at a minimum cost to port between devices) and capable in running in anything can access internet.
I suggest you to catch up and learn a lot about webservices, Json, JS libraries like JQuery, Sammy and some nice stuff like Knockout, SPA, Angular, Node, etc.
Edit, answer to comments
To not start a chatty comment I'll respond here. Yes your questions and comments brings interesting questions. To let it readable for posterity both of us can edit answer and question to organize it.
Silverlight. How not love it? In special after strugling with flash. It's a shame MS pulled the plug (die in hell MS CEOs). When MS let it to die I was planning a big web app SL was my first choice. Why I changed my mind? Well 2 years to develop that app and at the end how much browser ill get along supporting it? The SL community is great, the tool is great but browsers can just say, Hey tomorrow there's no guarantee it keep working.
.Net and MS platforms. I'm a .Net developer. I adopted it since beta, first to work with winforms (in a previous life I was a proud Delphi developer). After a while started to work with web. I also worked in classical ASP (bad times) and loved .Net ASP from start.
You can run .Net apps in almost any PC in the planet today. Not exactly true for all mobiles/gadgets. For browsers pure HTML+JS+CSS ill to better because it's lightweight (done right). Also we can move a lot of thing to client side and just let it hit the server only when necessary. .Net apps can do that, sure, but ill never be light as a tailored HTML+JS+CSS.
In fact I believe you can do anything with .Net and you can do amazing things if you got a few good developers in your team. But depending on the project it ill do better (and cheaper) in HTML or PHP or Ruby or Java, etc.
In fact at a previous shop, with both PHP and .Net teams we found (after 1 year study, metrics, lots of projects) small projects are better done in PHP, larger ones in .Net (if I remember a medium project can be 4k to 6k men/hours).
The point here is. You really must read a lot about HTML, CSS, JS, SPA, Angular, etc. Bringing to live a big and shinning web app is challenging today not because what we can do (we can do anything) but how we can do. DDD, MVC, MVVM. Testing framework, etc. Man Node is the future (the concept at least).
Web developing really changed in the last years and with it the clients and users expectations. Today no one ill wait for more than 2 secs for a page to load. Everybody wants usability to be at the top of the table from project scratch. You app must be responsive, etc. (not using Dilbertian management buzz words here for the sake of it. Just stating usability is that important today).
And don't forget everyone wants it to be beatifull (from a graphical designer point of view) even if it's a dull B2B supposed to be used only by cave mens.
Even if you stick to a classical .Net app learn about the (many) options, that can bring a new wider perspective.
I have decided to answer this question here because we've had a lot more time to investigate and look at different options. The original question turned out to be a bit of a furphy. Pure UWP and Web are not the only options. There is also a Xamarin Forms as an option which includes UWP, Android, and iOS. As a personal preference, I am leaning toward using Xamarin Forms as a client instead of any other development platform because it supports three OSs out of the box: Windows 10, iOS, and Android.
I believe the answer to the question is: you should only develop a web app if you need to. Does your user base consist of people who will mostly prefer a browser over apps? Are your potential users likely to want to avoid downloading an app? Is your app very simple, and you want people to be able to dive in very quickly? Are you able to get away without access to things like the camera, location and push notifications? If you can answer yes to these things, then I think you should go for HTML 5/JavaScript. If however, your user base is comfortable downloading apps, and you think that your app will require a UI more sophisticated than most browser apps, I'd recommend looking at Xamarin Forms as the preferred option. We've had very good success with Xamarin Forms so far, and the UWP version of our Xamarin Forms app has turned out just as good as our first stab at a UWP app.
Note: I should give Web Assembly (http://webassembly.org/) an honorable mention here. This technology is being considered in all the big tech organisations like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. One day, it may make deployment of native apps in a browser great again.
can anyone tell me for certain if are you allowed to use Adobe Cirrus service (p2p) in commercial applications or websites? for instance you have a online game.
all the threads and articles i have found are over 4years old (stating that) so was wondering if things had changed since then?
have done bit more digging the only thing i have found was on the Adobe Cirrus labs page:
What are my options to use RTMFP in my commercial application?
Developers can use Adobe Media Server to develop and deploy RTMFP
applications.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cirrus/
Is there an in-browser, Flash-free method to view ebooks from Adobe Content Server?
We currently offer a library of c.50k specialist ebooks via a feature-rich "ereader" web-app (HTML5/JS based with various fallbacks down to IE7).
However, management want to be able to offer "downloadable" ebooks for "mobile devices". By this they mean a file that the user can download and read offline. Adobe Content Server is fine for this (if a little expensive, and a little hated by the users, but unfortunately it's becoming an industry standard...)
OK so if we adopt ACS, making downloadable-for-offline-reading a possibility, what are the options for online reading, assuming we want to use ACS for everything and not just offline? In other words ... is there an in-browser reader for Adobe Content Server?
Flash is not a possibility as a) a lot of the users us iPads (yes for online reading too) and b) a lot of the users have to use IE7 with no Flash installed (the NHS is a major customer).
I realise I might be asking for the impossible but I thought it would be worth hearing peoples' thoughts.
Please don't advise me not to use DRM, it's not my choice and I have already advised against using it. However we are contractually obliged by our suppliers to have "a DRM solution" for offline reading.
If there was a widely-available alternative solution to Adobe Content Server I'd be interested to hear about it. I have already integrated ACS once (version 3) and don't really look forward to repeat the experience...
There are a number of reader apps which support ACS, such as Sony Reader. Your readers can use those apps (after "sideloading" your books, a process which differs from reader to reader) to read the ACS books. I don't know of any browser-based reader, but it seems to me that the apps (which exist for all major platforms) should get the job done for you. These apps all keep local copies of books and work just fine offline.
Awhile ago i read about adobe coming out with an AIR app for Buzzword. I searched google and the most recent updates I can find about it are all the way back in 2008, which is REALLY strange, and I can't find a download ANYWHERE.
Does anyone know what happened? Is there an AIR app for Buzzword? Or... ?
Nah, Adobe became careless with the whole Acrobat and Buzzword issue. Lack of resources, company vision, no idea.
This will be so good to be truth :)
Here is a discussion on this http://forums.adobe.com/thread/94505?tstart=0
Existing Buzzword application already checks if the Flash runtime is a Web based or desktop based. So it does support but the offical .air is yet to come.
What's all this business about Flash, Flex, Adobe Air, Java FX and Silverlight? Why would I choose one over the other? and what happened to Java Applets and ActiveX controls?
Oh, and where does AJAX fit in to all this? and is Laszlo relevant?
Afteredit (in response to some "d'uh" type answers): the question is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I know about the various RIA technologies. I am, however, interested in the StackOverflow community's opinion about each - particularly why you would use one over the other
Big topic and it would take pages to provide a full answer so here is the "short" version...
Adobe Flex/AIR is by far the most mature RIA platform out there and it runs in FlashPlayer. You write apps using ActionScript (similar to Javascript) and MXML (markup used primarily for layout/view code). You can also deploy Flex applications easily to the desktop if the user has the AIR runtime installed.
Silverlight is Microsoft's offering which is still quite a bit behind Flex but is rapidly gaining ground. The SL runtime is new and slowly gaining a larger install base. You can use C#, VB.NET or other languages supported by the .NET runtime. It runs on Windows and Mac but doesn't run on the desktop.
JavaFX is a platform, API and scripting language for building RIA on the Java platform. It's the newest entry and just recently had its 1.0 release. It can run in the browser or the desktop and can leverage any and all Java code. Given how much open source Java code exists this can be pretty compelling.
AJAX / DHTML is primarily an alternative to these technologies, although since FP, SL and Java all have two-way Javascript APIs, you can write applications that use both and allow them to interoperate.
Flash/Flex, JavaFX, and Silverlight are tools for developing rich internet applications (RIA). You're probably very familiar with Flash applications, which are frequently full of animation and other effects. JavaFX and Silverlight let you develop similar applications. Laszlo fits into the same picture.
Silverlight is Microsoft's entry, and it is designed to work in the .NET stack. JavaFX is Sun's new offering, and it is designed to work with the Java Virtual Machine. To oversimplify Adobe AIR, it is an attempt to get RIA content to run seamlessly on the desktop (JavaFX provides this as well).
Applets haven't gone away, they just suffered from a bad implementation of the JVM in web browsers. JavaFX is the new heir to applets.
AJAX is very different; AJAX is a way to use a browser's existing capabilities, without plugins, to provide seemingly rich and interactive webpages. It uses JavaScript and XML. While some AJAX applications are undeniably cool, it is not as easy or as natural to develop Flash-style RIAs.
I know nothing about flex and air, but Flash, Java FX and Silverlight are all web technologies that essentially do the same thing vying for market share because none of these companies (Adobe, Sun, and Microsoft, respectively) wants to give the other an edge and/or not control the major content delivery platform on the web. That's it in a nutshell. Market speak would probably include something like "rich internet applications" or something like that.
ActiveX was, unless I am mistake, a huge festering security hole, that is largely abandoned even by Microsoft and Java applets never took off in the way sun wanted them to. I am not quite sure why, but I think they lacked the simplicity that attracted people to flash.
Ajax has nothing to do with all this. Ajax is just a way to keep an entire page from refreshing by dividing it up into subsections that refresh independently. Again, this is me trying to explain this all as non-technically as possible.
EDIT: It seems I approached this answer the wrong way. To get alittle more technical; Flash is the most mature of the bunch. Silverlight and JavaFX are essentially babies, and while both Microsoft and Sun are trying to woo developers from their existing base (.net and java), I don't know if anyone can say anything definitive about either technology. It is going to take alittle while to see what technologies take off.
Sounds like you need to fire up Google and do a little research and reading. Start with "rich Internet application" or "RIA", or simply enter those terms and enjoy.
Consider the first three to be synonyms; JavaFX is the Sun offering; Silverlight is Microsoft's entry.
Nothing "happened" to applets or ActiveX controls, they're both still with us. They're a bit dated and fallen out of favor. Applets had their heyday when teapots first danced on the Web; ActiveX controls have some security issues.
Laszlo appears to be the inspiration for Flex, according to this.