Elephants Dream from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Some time ago if you waned to install an additional operating system for testing or using, you had to repartition your hard drive, reconfiguring you boot loader or creating one, carefully choosing all kinds of stuff and some times even loosing the basic working operating system.

Well all of this are unnecessarily now because now systems emulators like vmware and virtualbox exists ant this means that you can run stright from you running oeprating system, a different system (PC) with his own BIOS, and hardware ( more software that hardware actually ), and installing any operating system you wish as simple as that.

If you want to find out more on this it’s better to test it yourself, because this software, can be downloaded quickly, and also the installation of the operating system it seems to be a lot faster than on a normal PC.

A very important thing, VirtualBOX it’s free and on a first look better that vmware which isn’t free at all. So I recommend you VirtualBOX

[View with PicLens]

If you what a fast solution for installing Apache with php and mysql XAMPP is one of the best choices. You can install it under windows, linux and even MAC OS X, with small effort for fast use.

This is update often using the latest stable versions of each service in the package.

Easy to setup every service, a has a nice control panel for starting and stopping the services.

For example XAMPP 1.7.1 has the following versions:

• Apache HTTPD 2.2.11 + Openssl 0.9.8i
• MySQL 5.1.33
• PHP 5.2.9
• phpMyAdmin 3.1.3.1
• XAMPP CLI Bundle 1.3
• FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.31
• Mercury Mail Transport System 4.62

Here are some screenshots:

[View with PicLens]

As a Flex developer I tried several IDE’s for developing certain projects in a faster and easier way. I’ve tried some open source/free IDE’s but none of them was as good as Flex Builder because they didn’t had the Design feature for dialogs and components. The main reason is the memory and the process that Eclipse environment ( on which Flex Builder is based  ) occupies is too much.

Recently after a common google search I’ve encountered a Microsoft Visual Studio plugin that gives you the posibility to develop Flex applications and also with a design posibility like Flex Builder. Under the name of  “Amethyst” by SapphireSteel software under the current development state  of beta 5, this plugin can be downloaded from here

This seems to work a lot faster, and the good part is that it has the debugging feature from Visual Studio which is more friendly that the one from Flex Builder or so it seems to me.

Click here for details on installing and using this plugin.

Here you have some screenshots on this

[View with PicLens]

Good Luck.

This is a remote connection data request class used for requesting data in Flex (AS3), using static function calls to a amfphp gateway.

This is free and you can use it the way you want. So I won’t provide a example for using; this will be your work for deserving it.

Put this in the package you want (this is currently in wm.managers). ad name the file RemoteDatamanager.as

Don’t forget to set the server side php session id so you have the same sesion data when you’re doing file uploads for example.

package wm.managers
{
	import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
 
	import wm.objects.IProcess;
 
	public class RemoteDataManager
	{
		private static var _instance:SingletonRemoteDataManager; 
 
		public function RemoteDataManager()
		{
			throw(new Error('RemoteDataManager: You can\'t instatiate a singleton class'));
		}
 
		private static function instance():* {
			if (_instance) {
			} else {
				_instance = new SingletonRemoteDataManager();
			}
			return _instance;
		} 
 
		// PUBLIC INTERFACE FUCNTIONS
 
		public static function requestAmfphp(request:String , data:*, callback:Function, listeners:String = null, process:IProcess = null, service:String = ''):void {
			instance().requestAmfphp(request,data,callback, listeners, process,service);
		}
 
		public static function setSessionId(sessionid:String):void {
			instance().setSessionId(sessionid);
		}
 
		public static function getSessionId():String {
			return instance().getSessionId();
		}
 
		public static function dispatchListener(listener:String):void {
			instance().dispatchListener(listener);
		}
 
		public static  function set gatewayRequestPath(value:String):void {
			instance().gatewayRequestPath = value;
		}
 
	}
}
 
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import flash.utils.Dictionary;
import wm.managers.LoggingManager;
import wm.utils.RemotingConnection;
import flash.net.Responder;
import flash.profiler.showRedrawRegions;
import mx.managers.CursorManager;
import mx.controls.Alert;
import flash.events.NetStatusEvent;
import wm.objects.IProcess;
import wm.structures.ProcessMessage;
import mx.core.Application;
import wm.managers.RemoteDataManager;
 
internal class RemoteAmfRequest {
 
	private var _request:String;
	private var _data:*;
	private var _callback:Function;
	private var _service:String;
	private var _remoteUrl:String;
	private var _process:IProcess = null;
 
	public function RemoteAmfRequest(request:String , data:*, callback:Function, service:String, process:IProcess, remoteConnectionUrl:String) {
		_request = request;
		_callback = callback;
		_service = service;
		_remoteUrl = remoteConnectionUrl;
		_data = data;
		_process = process;
 
		executeRequest()
	}
 
	public function get request():String 	{ return _request; }
	public function get data():* 			{ return _data; }
	public function get callback():Function { return _callback; }
	public function get service():String 	{ return _service; }
	public function get remoteUrl():String 	{ return _remoteUrl; }
	public function get process():IProcess	{ return _process; }
 
	private function setBusyProcess():void {
		if (_process)
			_process.sendMessage(new ProcessMessage(ProcessMessage.MODAL_LOCK, {mode:true}));
	}
 
	private function removeBusyProcess():void {
		if (_process)
			_process.sendMessage(new ProcessMessage(ProcessMessage.MODAL_LOCK, {mode:false}));
	}
 
	public function executeRequest():void {
		var gateway:RemotingConnection = new RemotingConnection( _remoteUrl );
		gateway.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS,net_status_callback)
		gateway.call( _service, new Responder(onResult, onFault),_request, _data);
		CursorManager.setBusyCursor();
		setBusyProcess()
	}
 
	private function net_status_callback(ev:NetStatusEvent):void {
		Alert.show("Net status error has occoured:")
		CursorManager.removeBusyCursor();
		removeBusyProcess();
	}
 
	private function onResult(output:*):void {
		removeBusyProcess();
		output['errors']   = false;
		output['messages'] = false;
 
		// Searching for alerts to be made from request callback output
		if (output['alerts']) {
			var item:*;
 
			if (output['alerts']['messages']) {
				for each (item in output['alerts']['messages']) {
					Alert.show(item.message,item.title);
					output['messages'] = true;
				}
			}
			if (output['alerts']['errors']) {
				for each (item in output['alerts']['errors']) {
					output['errors'] = true;
					Alert.show(item.message,item.title);
				}
			}
		}
 
		if (output['__sessid']) {
			RemoteDataManager.setSessionId(output['__sessid']);
		}
 
		if (this['_callback'])
			_callback(output);
 
		CursorManager.removeBusyCursor();
	}
 
	private function onFault( fault:String ):void {
		LoggingManager.addLog("RemoteAmfRequest","Amf fault: '" + fault + "'. Details(Request: `"+_request+"`, Service: `"+_service+"`);");
		CursorManager.removeBusyCursor();
	}
 
}
 
internal class SingletonRemoteDataManager {
 
	private var _requestStack:Dictionary = new Dictionary();
 
	private var _listenersStack:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
 
	private var remoteConnectionUrl:String = "";
 
	private var defaultService:String = "system.request";
 
	private var sessionId:String = '';
 
	/**
	 */
 
	public function requestAmfphp(request:String , data:*, callback:Function = null, listeners:String = null, process:IProcess = null, service:String = ''):void {
		// Send also the session id
		//data.__sessid = sessionId;
 
		var _remoteAmfRequest:RemoteAmfRequest = new RemoteAmfRequest(
			request,
			data,
			callback,
			service.length ? service : defaultService,
			process,
			remoteConnectionUrl
		);
 
		if (listeners)
		if (listeners.length) {
 
			// HERE I SEARCH IF A SIMILAR LISTENER FOR AN IDENTICALL REQUEST WAS ALREADY ADDDED TO STACK
 
			for each (var item:* in _listenersStack) {
				if (
					(item.listenersString==listeners) &&
					(item.reference.callback == callback) &&
					(item.reference.request == request)
				) {
					_listenersStack.removeItemAt(_listenersStack.getItemIndex(item));
				}
			}
			_listenersStack.addItem({listeners:listeners.split(','), listenersString:listeners, reference:_remoteAmfRequest});
		}
	}
 
	public function set gatewayRequestPath(value:String):void {
		remoteConnectionUrl = value;
	}
 
	public function setSessionId(sessionid:String):void {
		this.sessionId  = sessionid;
	}
 
	public function getSessionId():String {
		return this.sessionId;
	}
 
	public function dispatchListener(listener:String):void {
		for each (var item:* in _listenersStack) {
			for each (var listenerString:String in item.listeners) {
				if (listenerString == listener) {
					item.reference.executeRequest();
					break;
				}
			}
		}
 
	}
 
}

Also known as GUI, from my point of view this is a very important subject when we talk about software development. There are a lot of applications that solve similar problems and tasks, but the most of them are more successful over others  by a very major factor, and that is the application design, which includes the graphic, and functional design. The main aspect that I wish to debate here is the graphical one, because from my opinion regarding the level technology succeeded to reach is not fully used, and where this is used at fully capacity this is made in a wrong way.

The example I wish to give to sustain my opinion is the evolution of the most useful software of them all, the operating system (OS). I will not write a history of OS already written by others but, a graphical evolution summary.

The most known latest OS are  made by Microsoft (Windows 7), Apple (MAC OS X - Leopard) and of course the one that is made by everybody, Linux (with lots of distribution versions like Ubuntu 9.04 which is one of the most familiar ones).

* I’ve ommited many operating sistems like the embedded ones, and other that are not used as much as the above mentioned ones liek QNX

Very short and fast graphical evolution of every OS:

Microsoft - Windows

[View with PicLens]

* Windows 2.0, Windows 98, Windows XP , Windows 7

Apple - MAC OS X

[View with PicLens]

* MAC OS X appears in 24th of March 2001, development based on  OPENSTEP and BSD Unix and it evolves very quickly

Linux - Ubuntu

[View with PicLens]

* Based on Debian which is based on Linux which is based also like MAC OS X on Unix, in evolved also very fast udner an open development

They all start from a raw OS represented by a terminal used for receiving  input from users to do a limited set of operations most of them low level, and heading over to a windowed interface, using devices like the mouse, touchpads and others to ease the usage of the features provided by every operating sistem.

From the basic usage of buttons, resizeable windows, editable textareas and radio boxes using mostly the cursor, the OS’s aim to replace this style with the touch sensible input devices like the touchscreens.

Development Platforms

And now the applications made for this OS’s, which are native or managed. This means that some of the compilers result a native executable code, and a managed one or interpreted which is basically executed by a virtual machine in some cases or a similar system.

I will mention here two of them, which from my opinion are sharing the same level on the heights of evolution, by succeeding to release a power solution for a large scale of online applications, most of them directly from the browser.

1. Adobe Flash

A very familiar product for many  internet users because many reached a website where if they didn’t had the Adobe Flash  Player to play a specific website flash based content, and had to install id.  This is one of the most successful internet custom content player plugin if not the best, because this content could play video and audio streams, could make vector based animations using a very high variety of effects available like the blur effect, glow, blending, masking, and many others.

The player got faster and more reliable with better graphics so Adobe decided to extend this technology with a application development framework that got the name Flex (Adobe Flex Builder), provinding a ful lset of features for developing any king of application standalone or browser dependable.

2. Microsoft Silverlight

Silverlight developed by Microsoft tries to achieve the same results or close to Adobe Flash, still being even now under development with some major lacks of features considering what Adobe’s offered by now. The main idea is that this also will be a tool similar to Flash Player and also will develop good looking application with a very “gorgeous” application interface design as we can see from some screenshots of what Microsoft Expression Blend 2 can do.

3. 3D Browser Plugins (possible GUI solutions)

• Unity3D  - visit

• Torque (GarageGames) - visit

Used mostly for games or demos, 3d viewers, not for applications but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Unfortunately this plugins are hard to connect with Flash player for example, and not all the browser plugins offered by this 3d engines are browser compliant.

4. Other development platforms with GUI features

Other existent platforms development platforms, either are hard to implement requiring too much time to sacrifice for using in a application, or the possibilities of connecting with other functionality of the operating system are dependent of other libraries and so on.

This are platform that can be used to build cross platforms standalone applications, using even 3D acceleration for rendering. Used only for well defined applications types like 3D applications (games), standard application etc.

1. Ogre 3D - visit
   
2. Irrlicht - visit
   
3. wxPython - visit
4. Microsoft DirectX 10 (Windows only)
5. Microsoft .NET
6. … many others
   

Conclusion ?

It’s very obvious that the current target of applications is aiming to online functionality, mostly straight from the browser. This gives the posibility of any user to access the desired content or application functionality from anywhere and anytime. So if we should talk about future  applications I belive this is the right area, by using great graphics in a application for a large variety of software users this will become a main target platform for many technologies like those described abouve.

• Positive elements (many of them supported only by Flash)
  • Vectorized graphics, providing this way a fast loading of graphic contents, great graphic details
  • Multimedia streaming, high quality audio and HD video support, and high loading speeds (Flash Player 10)
  • A very flexible development environment, with enormous possibilities of implementation
  • Cross platform, by being browser dependent
  • 3D accelerated graphics, providing enormous more drawing speed  (Flash Player 10)

• Negative elements
  • Nonnative executable code, interpreted by “players”, losing some speed there
  • Almost nonexistent portability possibilities of those technologies on a lower layer like the OS ’s windows rendering system
  • Sandbox security limitations, giving the developers a short list of OS layer operations (File System, OS Processes)

Din cauza lipsei de serviciilor de upload de fisiere simple si fara reclame enervante m-am decis sa imi fac un astefel de website lite special pt uplaod de fisiere simplu si fara prea mult bataie de cap.

Asha ca de la website s-a ajuns la o aplicatie mica pusa frumos online la uploader.freejack.ro care de ceva vreme ii metoda de transportat fisiere de la punctul a la punctul b f usor.

Deoarece si-a facut treaba destul de bine am decis sa il fac public si sa-l dau cumva si lumii asha ca daca doriti sa il folositi aveti pentru test contul cu detaliile de mai jos:

Username : public

Password: public

In caz ca doriti un cont personal contactativa si o sa fie facut pe loc.

Inca odata adresa : http://uploader.freejack.ro/

Ha acum cateva zile am fost cu domnul Killerops si Za_Blackcat la vanatoare de trasnete. Rezultatul ?

Pentru vizualizarea mai misto a pozelor click pe [View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

Si aici pozele facute de killerops

Pentru vizualizarea mai misto a pozelor click pe [View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

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