CommandProxy is a proof of concept by Mike Chambers (Adobe AIR team) that offers a solution to a feature that Ben and I have wanted in AIR…. the ability to talk to native code:
Two of the most requested features for Adobe AIR have been the ability to launch native executables from an AIR application, and the ability to integrate native libraries into an AIR application. Unfortunately, neither feature will be included in Adobe AIR 1.0.
However, this does not mean that you cannot build an AIR application that has closer / tighter integration with the underlying operating system. This lower level of integration is possible, but it requires some work on your part. I have put together a proof of concept project, which shows how to integrate Adobe AIR applications with c# / .NET code on any operating system that Adobe AIR currently runs on (Mac and Windows). The project is called CommandProxy. It provides a communication proxy between an AIR application and the underlying operating system and could theoretically work with other web based desktop runtimes (such as Mozilla Prism).
How does it work?
The general concept behind the project is similar to the now defunct Artemis project (which was Java based). The AIR application communicates with the CommandProxy process to communicate and integrate with the underlying operating system. Currently the command proxy supports launching processes (and getting the output from the processes) as well as taking a screenshot of the user’s current screen. However, the framework is built in such a manner that it is possible to add new functionality to the proxy.
Facebook is slowly adding features that allow you to do more JavaScript in their world. This started with FBJS (after mock ajax), and today they have announced FBJS/Animation, an open source animation library that not only works inside Facebook, but also can be used stand alone.
There is a nice writeup of Animation which includes tweening, easing, and checkpoints.
<ahref="#"onclick="Animation(document.getElementById('container')).to('height', '0px').to('width', '0px').to('opacity', 0).blind().hide().ease(Animation.ease.end).go(); return false;">Hide this div</a>.
It is great to see open source libraries like this come out of Facebook. I am curious why they decided not to use one of the other animation libraries out there. If you know, comment below!
Triggit has created a rattling engrossing tool. The difficulty they are disagreeable to cipher is that whatever grouping poverty to soil around with their websites, but don’t poverty to grok HTML. They poverty to combine with services (mash them up in a drill digit soured way) much as append their videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr, and another business items. One bounteous digit is existence healthy to add business to the site.
As techies we ofttimes conceive that things are cushy enough, “What? You meet locate in whatever embed code…. how hornlike is that!” Triggit allows you to go meta and locate in exclusive digit embed code, and then substance a toolbar for users to add noesis in WYSIWYG style.
How does this every work?
When you locate in that playscript cipher on your site, it has a offer backwards to the Triggit platform. Say you poverty to add a picture from Flickr: In the agency you encounter the picture and locate it on the concealment and impact save. The state is ransomed backwards to Triggit ‘add this picture to that positioning with this style’. Then when a traveller hits the site, the tender is loaded, the JavaScript is run, and the state is dispatched downbound to the covering and the DOM is denaturized to add this image. Zach said that digit of the large challenges was effort this employed crossways the different browsers, so when you locate an ikon at whatever locate using Firefox (the prototypal covering that is supported for the covering side), it ends up in the correct locate no concern which covering is utilised from the traveller perspective.
This effectuation that you today hit a formal page, but noesis is removed between you actual backend, and the Triggit servers. The plus to this method is that you crapper combine with anything. You don’t requirement to hit primary cipher that groks a portion backend service, it is every generic.
So, this is a lowercase discover there. You are equalisation between making it unbelievably cushy to update pages, and adding complexness by having noesis in removed places. The tender could move a lowercase depending on the turn of aggregation reaching down, if Triggit gets dugg, or what hit you. If flourishing though, you crapper wager as developers that you could indite plugins for the grouping and earmark Evangelist Doe to easily bond in your content. That is the forthcoming promise.
Fancy gift it a go? Zach gave Ajaxian readers 300 invites (as the creation IS in beta!). Head over to the signup page and ingest the cipher “ajaxian” and if you are in the prototypal 300 you should be beatific to go. Oh, and for emotionlessness factor, I conceive that Rails, Erlang, and disturbed JavaScript skills were utilised to attain this happen.
I got to set downbound with Zach Coelius and he discusses the product, and gives us a achievement through:
I also hit a brief demonstrate of it streaming on my possess blog:
Triggit, a San Francisco supported startup, with the intend of making chronicle a aggregation simpler for scheme publishers, today declared the beta start of the prototypal ever WYSIWYG scheme covering for desegregation ordinal band elements into websites.
With Triggit, some scheme house crapper today inspire and add advertisements, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos and more, direct into their locate without some skills in scheme programming. Triggit is liberated to use, and entireness on some locate that accepts JavaScript. It does not order some downloads, admittance to FTP, or APIs, and installs easily by pasting digit diminutive example of cipher in the site.
“Triggit is here to support anyone who would same to verify flooded plus of the resources of the scheme for their locate who isn’t a technologist and who doesn’t conceive in code,” says Susan Coelius-Keplinger, Triggit’s COO.
At a instance when more and more non-technical publishers are reaching online, Triggit is convergent on removing the complexness of using cipher to add ordinal band objects to a page. Whether it is widget, a recording of a canid skateboarding, or a flag ad, underway profession ease requires the ingest of embedded cipher to combine these elements into a website. For publishers habitual to using illustration individual interfaces for every their computing, it crapper be a discouraging duty to add and combine cipher into their websites. One Atlantic where this is a portion difficulty is for online business networks who move to retrograde hundreds of jillions of dollars of possibleness earnings yearly to scheme publishers who can’t combine and behave their ad units.
Triggit’s noesis is to help as a feature-rich agency whereby publishers crapper apace and easily combine every behavior of widgets, content, business units, APIs and accumulation from ordinal band sites. In doing so, it operates as a organisation limb for companies hunt to distribute the accomplish of their advertisements, widgets, noesis and accumulation on the web. By making it easier for scheme publishers to combine these objects into their websites, Triggit helps to modify the knowledge of these companies to accomplish large online audiences and add newborn income streams. Ryan Tecco, Triggit’s CTO says “It is rattling primeval life for this technology. There are a aggregation of things inactivity in the wings that we haven’t still locate into the tool. We are rattling agog to wager where this goes”.
