I’m not a blogger, I never was. I don’t have the time for this nor the talent or the nerves to write an article that anyway somebody else for sure already did that regarding a certain subject  and far more better than me. Of course I’ve already have some articles and those articles I thought that they will be the only ones for many years available on this website.

BUT ! I thought wrong because a sequel to my best game I’ve ever played in my life has been announced, The Elder Scrolls V will appear this year on 11.11.11.

The first RPG I’ve played was The Elder Scrolls III – Morrowind, which was from my opinion, at his time, one of the best games I’ve ever played. Great graphics, a very well made 3D engine, easy to modify by gamers for making their own quests or maps, weapons and armors, creatures and so on. The game that until today had the most quests ever, and and a very interesting leveling system wasn’t best out by it’s  by his follower except graphics (The Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion).

Although I was rather disappointed by the number of quests and their difficulty, map size available in Oblivion, the week storyline and the lack of surprises or secrets in the game, Oblivion offered very great graphics, a very good combat system, ant one of the most advanced 3D game engine that I’ve ever saw (ex: people has their own schedule, simulated on a very realistic way).

I hope Skyrim will be a merge of Morrowind quests somehow and Oblivion’s system all improved and doing this regaining their well earned reputation, under the name of Bethesda Softworks a company that, which some of us know, makes great games

I wish them great success with the game, and not to be late or change the release date because it’s very cool.

Elder scrolls various google images

Search on google for Elder scrolls

The Elder Scrolls III – Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls V – Skyrim

Stoc Digital Studio company brought up the website for one of their latest products, first one that they made public, and report creation suite named ARX.

It is developed over a Flex framework that is named Titan which from what I know it will come up at surface the same way ARX did in the next future.

the Suite is made of two parts: the designer and the renderer both written in Actionscript 3, the designer being a standalone application used from browser or as an AIR executable, and the render being targeted for the developers, for using in their application by loading the report necessary data along with the report definition, and rendering it.

An Java renderer service version is also predicted to come which will take the weight from the application process shoulders and handled asynchronously server side.

For more information I suggest you to check their website for more information:

www.arx-reports.com

The software will be in beta for a while so we encourage the developers team to bring it to a final version and wish them good luck.

Windows Hotkeys

Ctrl + Escape or Win: Display start menu.
Shift + F10 or AppsKey: Display context menu.
Win + E: Open Windows Explorer.
Win + R: Open Run dialog.
Win + M: Minimize all windows.
Win + Shift + M: Undo minimize all windows.
Win + D: Toggle minimize all windows.
Win + B (XP only): Activate system tray. Arrow keys select, Enter double-clicks, and AppsKey or Shift + F10 right-clicks.
Win + L (XP Only): Locks keyboard. Similar to Lock Workstation.
Win + F or F3: Open Find dialog. (All Files) F3 may not work in some applications which use F3 for their own find dialogs.
Win + Control + F: Open Find dialog. (Computers)
Win + U: Open Utility Manager.
Win + F1: Open Windows help.
Win + Pause: Open System Properties dialog.
Win + Tab: Cycle through taskbar buttons. Enter clicks, AppsKey or Shift + F10 right-clicks.
Win + Shift + Tab: Cycle through taskbar buttons in reverse.
Alt + Tab: Display CoolSwitch. More commonly known as the AltTab dialog.
Alt + Shift + Tab: Display CoolSwitch; go in reverse.
Alt + Escape: Send active window to the bottom of the z-order.
Alt + Shift + Escape: Activate the window at the bottom of the z-order.
Alt + F4: Close active window; or, if all windows are closed, open shutdown dialog.
Shift while a CD is loading: Bypass AutoPlay.
Ctrl + Alt + Delete or Ctrl + Alt + NumpadDel (Both NumLock states): Invoke the Task Manager or NT Security dialog.
Ctrl + Shift + Escape (XP Only): Invoke the task manager. On earlier OSes, acts like Ctrl + Escape.
Printscreen: Copy screenshot of current screen to clipboard.
Alt + Printscreen: Copy screenshot of current active window to clipboard.
Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow: Invert screen. Untested on OSes other than XP.
Ctrl + Alt + Up Arrow: Undo inversion.

Generic

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert: Copy.
Ctrl + X or Shift + Delete: Cut.
Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert: Paste/Move.
Ctrl + N: New… File, Tab, Entry, etc.
Ctrl + S: Save.
Ctrl + O: Open…
Ctrl + P: Print.
Ctrl + Z: Undo.
Ctrl + A: Select all.
Ctrl + F: Find…
Ctrl + F4: Close tab or child window.
F1: Open help.
F11: Toggle full screen mode.
Alt or F10: Activate menu bar.
Alt + Space: Display system menu. Same as clicking the icon on the titlebar.
Escape: Remove focus from current control/menu, or close dialog box.

Generic Navigation

Tab: Forward one item.
Shift + Tab: Backward one item.
Ctrl + Tab: Cycle through tabs/child windows.
Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Cycle backwards through tabs/child windows.
Enter: If a button’s selected, click it, otherwise, click default button.
Space: Toggle items such as radio buttons or checkboxes.
Alt + (Letter): Activate item corresponding to (Letter). (Letter) is the underlined letter on the item’s name.
Ctrl + Left: Move cursor to the beginning of previous word.
Ctrl + Right: Move cursor to the beginning of next word.
Ctrl + Up: Move cursor to beginning of previous paragraph. This and all subsequent Up/Down hotkeys in this section have only been known to work in RichEdit controls.
Ctrl + Down: Move cursor to beginning of next paragraph.
Shift + Left: Highlight one character to the left.
Shift + Right: Highlight one character to the right.
Shift + Up: Highlight from current cursor position, to one line up.
Shift + Down: Highlight from current cursor position, to one line down.
Ctrl + Shift + Left: Highlight to beginning of previous word.
Ctrl + Shift + Right: Highlight to beginning of next word.
Ctrl + Shift + Up: Highlight to beginning of previous paragraph.
Ctrl + Shift + Down: Highlight to beginning of next paragraph.
Home: Move cursor to top of a scrollable control.
End: Move cursor to bottom of a scrollable control.

Generic File Browser

Arrow Keys: Navigate.
Shift + Arrow Keys: Select multiple items.
Ctrl + Arrow Keys: Change focus without changing selection. “Focus” is the object that will run on Enter. Space toggles selection of the focused item.
(Letter): Select first found item that begins with (Letter).
BackSpace: Go up one level to the parent directory.
Alt + Left: Go back one folder.
Alt + Right: Go forward one folder.
Enter: Activate (Double-click) selected item(s).
Alt + Enter: View properties for selected item.
F2: Rename selected item(s).
F7: New folder.
Ctrl + NumpadPlus: In a Details view, resizes all columns to fit the longest item in each one.
Delete: Delete selected item(s).
Shift + Delete: Delete selected item(s); bypass Recycle Bin.
Ctrl while dragging item(s): Copy.
Ctrl + Shift while dragging item(s): Create shortcut(s).

In tree pane, if any:
Left: Collapse the current selection if expanded, or select the parent folder.
Right: Expand the current selection if collapsed, or select the first subfolder.
NumpadAsterisk: Expand currently selected directory and all subdirectories. No undo.
NumpadPlus: Expand currently selected directory.
NumpadMinus: Collapse currently selected directory.

Accessibility

Right Shift for eight seconds: Toggle FilterKeys on and off. FilterKeys must be enabled.
Left Alt + Left Shift + PrintScreen: Toggle High Contrast on and off. High Contrast must be enabled.
Left Alt + Left Shift + NumLock: Toggle MouseKeys on and off. MouseKeys must be enabled.
NumLock for five seconds: Toggle ToggleKeys on and off. ToggleKeys must be enabled.
Shift five times: Toggle StickyKeys on and off. StickyKeys must be enabled.

Microsoft Natural Keyboard with IntelliType Software Installed

Win + L: Log off Windows.
Win + P: Open Print Manager.
Win + C: Open control panel.
Win + V: Open clipboard.
Win + K: Open keyboard properties.
Win + I: Open mouse properties.
Win + A: Open Accessibility properties.
Win + Space: Displays the list of Microsoft IntelliType shortcut keys.
Win + S: Toggle CapsLock on and off.

Remote Desktop Connection Navigation

Ctrl + Alt + End: Open the NT Security dialog.
Alt + PageUp: Switch between programs.
Alt + PageDown: Switch between programs in reverse.
Alt + Insert: Cycle through the programs in most recently used order.
Alt + Home: Display start menu.
Ctrl + Alt + Break: Switch the client computer between a window and a full screen.
Alt + Delete: Display the Windows menu.
Ctrl + Alt + NumpadMinus: Place a snapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing Alt + PrintScreen on a local computer.
Ctrl + Alt + NumpadPlus: Place a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing PrintScreen on a local computer.

Mozilla Firefox 1.x

Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + PageDown: Cycle through tabs.
Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Ctrl + PageUp: Cycle through tabs in reverse.
Ctrl + (1-9): Switch to tab corresponding to number.
Ctrl + N: New window.
Ctrl + T: New tab.
Ctrl + L or Alt + D or F6: Switch focus to location bar.
Ctrl + Enter: Open location in new tab.
Shift + Enter: Open location in new window.
Ctrl + K or Ctrl + E: Switch focus to search bar.
Ctrl + O: Open a local file.
Ctrl + W: Close tab, or window if there’s only one tab open.
Ctrl + Shift + W: Close window.
Ctrl + S: Save page as a local file.
Ctrl + P: Print page.
Ctrl + F or F3: Open find toolbar.
Ctrl + G or F3: Find next…
Ctrl + Shift + G or Shift + F3: Find previous…
Ctrl + B or Ctrl + I: Open Bookmarks sidebar.
Ctrl + H: Open History sidebar.
Escape: Stop loading page.
Ctrl + R or F5: Reload current page.
Ctrl + Shift + R or Ctrl + F5: Reload current page; bypass cache.
Ctrl + U: View page source.
Ctrl + D: Bookmark current page.
Ctrl + NumpadPlus or Ctrl + Equals (+/=): Increase text size.
Ctrl + NumpadMinus or Ctrl + Minus: Decrease text size.
Ctrl + Numpad0 or Ctrl + 0: Set text size to default.
Alt + Left or Backspace: Back.
Alt + Right or Shift + Backspace: Forward.
Alt + Home: Open home page.
Ctrl + M: Open new message in integrated mail client.
Ctrl + J: Open Downloads dialog.
F6: Switch to next frame. You must have selected something on the page already, e.g. by use of Tab.
Shift + F6: Switch to previous frame.
Apostrophe (‘): Find link as you type.
Slash (/): Find text as you type.

BBCode (This forum’s posting)

While text is selected:
Alt + B: Format text in bold.
Alt + I: Format text in italics.
Alt + U: Format text as underlined.
Alt + Q: Format text as a quote.
Alt + C: Format text as code.
Alt + L: Format text as a list.
Alt + O: Format text as an ordered list.
Alt + P: Format url as a hotlinked image.
Alt + W: Format url as a hyperlink.

GMail

Must have “keyboard shortcuts” on in settings.
C: Compose new message.
Shift + C: Open new window to compose new message.
Slash (/): Switch focus to search box.
K: Switch focus to the next most recent email. Enter or “O” opens focused email.
J: Switch focus to the next oldest email.
N: Switch focus to the next message in the “conversation.” Enter or “O” expands/collapses messages.
P: Switch focus to the previous message.
U: Takes you back to the inbox and checks for new mail.
Y: Various actions depending on current view:
Has no effect in “Sent” and “All Mail” views.

• Inbox: Archive email or message.
• Starred: Unstar email or message.
• Spam: Unmark as spam and move back to “Inbox.”
• Trash: Move back to “Inbox.”
• Any label: Remove the label.

X: “Check” an email. Various actions can be performed against all checked emails.
S: “Star” an email. Identical to the more familiar term, “flagging.”
R: Reply to the email.
A: Reply to all recipients of the email.
F: Forward an email.
Shift + R: Reply to the email in a new window.
Shift + A: Reply to all recipients of the email in a new window.
Shift + F: Forward an email in a new window.
Shift + 1 (!): Mark an email as spam and remove it from the inbox.
G then I: Switch to “Inbox” view.
G then S: Switch to “Starred” view.
G then A: Switch to “All Mail” view.
G then C: Switch to “Contacts” view.
G then S: Switch to “Drafts” view.

Red ones are untested

Source

This is indeed a very special event. From what I’ve seen in the video below on apple’s website the event was actually more than special is was almost  x-file  event.

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

[nggallery id=14]

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:

[nggallery id=13]

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

[nggallery id=12]

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

[nggallery id=9]

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

Apple – MAC OS X

[nggallery id=10]

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

Linux – Ubuntu

[nggallery id=11]

* 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)