To be well prepared for the exam, I read the Flex 3 documentation and the Adobe AIR 1.5 documentation, especially the documents “Developing Adobe AIR 1.5 Applications with ADOBE FLEX 3″ and the “Adobe Flex 3 Developer Guide”, both available free of charge from Adobe.  I also downloaded Attest, an Adobe AIR application that was developed by the lovely people over at PXL Designs which you can download for free, and ran all the practice exams multiple times.  Unfortunately I must say, this effort was virtually worthless for what the exam was concerned.  Not a single question from the practice exams appeared on the real exam, nor did the “toughness” of the real questions reflect those in the practice exams.

To be honest, I must say that I found the exam quite hard.  After all, it’s been more than 3 years since I’ve been developing in Flex, and I would have expected the exam to be rather easy for a trained developer.  However, out of the 50 questions/problems I got, I would have to digg deep and long to find 20 of those that I’ve actually ever used in real-world application development.
So, reading through those PDF’s sure wasn’t a luxury to be able to pass this exam, not for me at least.

I know there are many possible questions out of which you’re presented 50 at the exam, so maybe I just got unlucky in the selection that I was presented with.
Anyway, if you’re looking to become certified too, make sure you’re well-prepared and good luck to you!

Sven

I won’t be explaining all the commands used here, you can Google them to fnd out what they do exactly, this is just a quick guide to get you up and running with Sabayon in VMWare in a couple of minutes without any hassle.

First, open a terminal and become root (su).
Then, create 7 new directories under /etc/rc.d. You need rc0.d to rc6.d. So mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc0.d, mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc1.d, … mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc6.d.

Now it’s time to update our system by getting the latest available kernel and packages.
Still as root in the terminal, enter these commands in the following order:
1) equo update all
2) equo upgrade
3) emerge – -sync && layman -S
4) equo conf update
5) equo install – -ask linux-sabayon

Now cd to the directory /usr/portage/sys-kernel/linux-headers and type ls to see a list of what’s in there.
Note the highest available number for your kernel (mine today is 2.6.30-r1).
Now execute the following command to get the linux-headers so you can compile the vmware-modules later on: emerge -va =sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.6.30-r1

Note that you don’t specify sys-kernel/linux-headers/linux-headers-2.6.30-r1 but instead directly refer to the header version you want after sys-kernel!!

Also keep in mind to enter the right version. The 2.6.30-r1 you see here is the one that is on my system. Replace it with the one you have if necessary!

Almost there!
If everything went well, you should now be able to get past the initial dialogs for installing VMWare Tools, and then successfully compile all the needed modules.
Just keep the default answers to all questions, it’s almost too easy

If that install went fine as well, there’s one last thing to do: update all the packages in your system.
Once more, run these 2 commands:
1) equo upgrade
2) equo conf update

Et voilà, your very own bleeding-edge Sabayon VM is there to put a smile on your face

Sabayon-linux 4.2 in VMWare Fusion

Dear readers,

I just spent 2 entire days trying to figure out how to consume a SOAP Webservice that requires a SOAP-header and WS-Security in Flex. Hopefully this post will help you out if you’re looking to do the same thing.

Download demo files here.

Let me start off by saying that the Import Web Service (WSDL) wizard in Flex 3 doesn’t work as it should!
The generated classes return invalid XML to the SOAP-request, and adding headers to your request is completely neglected.
But I did get it to work using the classical <mx:Webservice> tag and some hand-coding.

Here’s how to do it:

First you need a copy of the as3corelib (only if you need the WS-Security), more specifically you need the com.adobe.crypto.WSSEUsernameToken.as class.
This class returns a token as a String, which I think is not very convenient, so I added another function called “getUsernameTokenAsArray” which returns the different token elements required for WS-Security in an Array. This way you can just “pluck” the parts you need without having to parse a String.

Next you need to write some AS3 classes to map the datatypes expected by the WebService to your Flex app, and vice-versa.

I wrote a little utility class that lets you easily insert different types of SOAP-headers to your requests.
Currently methods are implemented for returning headers containing WS-Security. Feel free to use it and add your own methods for additional SOAP-header-types to it.
Here it is:

Now you can call your webservice and add headers like this:

Basically you create an <mx:Webservice>, pass it the correct parameters for your webservice. Then create a function to add the headers.
Call the clearHeaders method of your webservice (it’s a default method for a webservice object) to clear any existing headers, next call the addHeader method to attach the new header.

Finally call your webservice operation with the necessary input parameters and there you go: a nice SOAP-envelope with headers and WS-Security!

You can download a complete demo containing all necessary classes and a sample MXML file here.

I’m still struggling with the authentication however.
The SOAP-request looks exactly as it should and validates fine by the WSDL, but when using the Nonce and Created elements my username/digest and nonce keep getting rejected by the server. Without the nonce everything works like a charm.
Any of you guru’s out there know how to tackle this last problem?

It’s been ages since I looked at my blog… I know, and I apologize.
Alot of changes have been going on in my life in the past few months.
I got married, had a great honeymoon, bought a house, did tons of interesting & fun stuff at work, and now my first child is about to be born halfway March.

Having said that, I hope you can understand there were other things on my mind lately than writing my blog.
But here we are again in a new year with a fresh look, what better way to start it?

I do hope you’ll be pleased again by what you find if you stop by here from time to time.
There’s tons of things on my mind I’d like to share with you all and I promise to make up for the lost time in this new year.
If you’re reading this, welcome back and thanks for not dropping out on me!

Also I would like to say a BIG thank you to all the people who have commented on the topics posted and who have helped improving the classes you can find on this blog! Sorry for not getting back to you on your comments for so long and thank you for all your help and kind words!

I’ve noticed alot of visitors get to my blog in search of finding answers to using encryption in Flash and Flex.
Since this seems to be a hot topic, you can expect to find more on this at this blog in the future.

No new post without a new class, so here I give you Baby.as.
It’s my first child, still in the womb.
Expected to be born on March 14th, 2008.
Gender & name remain secret for now…

Sorry for the long silence, it’s been extremely busy at work for the past weeks.
I’ve also been making a website for my wedding next month, and for that I wanted to use the magnificent FlexBook component written by Elijah Greenfield. I struggled a little getting it to work on my MacBook Pro without FlexBuilder installed, but finally managed to get it to work and I’d love to share it with you as the tutorials for this component on the web seem to be non-existing.

To take it one step further, I also got it working in Flex 3 (which has been released on Adobe Labs) and running in Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo), which I thought was pretty cool
You can download the sources here.

To make it extremely cool, I wondered if I could get it to work in Remoting also using AMFPHP 1.9, Flex3 and running in AIR. And so I did:-)
The sources for a simple “Hello World” demo and for the AMFPHP demo are also included in the same ZIP-file.

As always, everything was built using only Open Source software (in my case in Eclipse using the free Flex2/Flex3 SDK, the AIR SDK and the FlexBook component, and AMFPHP 1.9), it can run on any platform at no cost.

If you don’t have the Flex3 SDK or Adobe AIR SDK yet, head over to Adobe Labs first to download them.
Included in the ZIP-file is everything you need to make it run.
Simply unzip the contents of the ZIP-file to a directory on your PC/Mac, create a new project in Eclipse and import the files.
You’ll notice the build.properties file. It is set up to compile the FlexBook demo by default. However, all that is needed to compile the HelloWorld demo and the AMFPHP demo is also set-up. All you need to do to compileone of those is comment out the appropriate lines in the build.properties file, and comment the ones you don’t need anymore.

For more detailed instructions on how to set up your Eclipse environment and use the ANT-templates, check out my other post: “Build and compile AS3, Flex2 and Apollo applications in Eclipse using Mac OS X”.

Basically, to use the FlexBook component, you only need to include the namespaces xmlns:controls=”qs.controls.*” and xmlns:effects=”qs.effects.*” in your mxml file. Make sure you use the right classpath, including it like this presumes the folder “qs” is on the same level in the hierarchy as your MXML-file. If you unzipped the contents of my download it should be in the right place.

Next, you can use the FlexBook component as such:

The “controls” namespace is known because you referenced it in your Application tag. To compile, the compiler also needs to know where to find the AS3 sources for the component. That is handled by the build.xml file which serves the right source path to the compiler (qs.*).
Next, you need to provide a front- and back-cover. Between these tags you can use any Flex component you like, like a mx:Label, mx:Text, mx:Image and so on.

Following the </controls:backCover> tag you start creating the pages of your FlexBook. Each component you use represents a new page in the FlexBook. In the demo I just used 6 <mx:Image> tags with embedded images to create 6 photo-pages. Feel free to replace them with your own content, or to use entirely different stuff. You can embed webpages, video, text, htmlText, images, … or your own components.

To compile them for Adobe AIR, you need 1 more XML file that describes your AIR Application. There are 3 files included in the ZIP-archive, one for each demo.

If the compiler gives you cr@p about compile-time constants, edit the flex-config.xml and set the “strict”-option to false. Then you should have no more trouble compiling the sources.

Use it, have fun with it, study it, and let me know what you think!

(P.S.: I’ll be posting more demo’s on Flex2/3, AIR and combining them with AMFPHP this weekend. One of them will be an Flex3/AMFPHP example of how to create a guestbook once I’ve written that for my wedding website. If you speak Dutch or are just curious, go and have a look -> http://www.pinnemuts.be And let me know what you think about it.)

Sven

It should be illegal to get up at 4AM…
Meet Bert, our design guru

Mr. Wim Vanhenden is in the mood!

Arrival at the hotel, we’ve been driving (too) fast, glad to arrive in 1 piece with our sleepy heads

In the Paris subway, heading over to the Centre Pompidou. Meet Mr. Hans Humblet, Mr. Indra ‘t Jolle, Mr. Stefan Verbakel, Mr. Frederic Humblet, Mr. Wim Vanhenden and Mr. Maarten Serneels, the Boulevart Flash Team.

Web Flash Festival Paris, here we are!

Wim and Erik Natzke, look how proud he is

Again Wim (this dude seems popular ), now in front of the Centre Pompidou, with the Flash Gang in the background

And myself, reporting to you live

From Paris with love

In retrospect, I must say that it hasn’t been what I’d expected it to be. Although there were some really nice sessions (like that by Erik Natzke and Carlos Ulloa), the overall level was below-average in my opinion and I don’t think I’ll be attending next year.

From an event taking place in the artistic Centre Pompidou in the heart of Paris, I expect at least to find a nice ambiance, a vibrant atmosphere, enthousiastic creative people gathering to see what everyone else is doing and sharing ideas with each other. Instead I found a badly organized event (it took me 10 minutes to find the location inside the Centre Pompidou where the event was taking place, not even an arrow in the entrance showing where you needed to be), with people just walking in and out the rooms where the sessions were being held, no bar or lounge to socialize or do some networking, no video screens, no music, no nothing to make it more of an event than of a”place were lectures were being held”.

That’s a real shame, and a missed opportunity.
Another thing that bothered me beyond reason is the fact that in every non-French spoken session, there was an interpreter sitting next to the presenter of the session translating every sentence the guy had to say. While the French are generally not the best English-speaking people in the world, it amazed and annoyed me to see that even web professionals (who I expect to be at such an event) are incapable of understanding what’s being said during a 1-hour session. This means that the presenter actually could only talk during a half hour, because the other half hour was being spent on translations. And although most of it was translated correctly, the translator also got it completely wrong some times, pointing out a whole different story to the public as was being told by the presenter (as was the case with Erik’s session a couple of times).

Some other sessions just sucked – pardon my French – and one even went completely down the drain due to a non-functioning demo that lasted over 30 minutes without the presenter realizing her demo didn’t work, until it started throwing one error after another and finally just crashed (the demo showing alleged interaction between a Wiimote and Flash).

That’s the reason why on Sunday, I decided to enjoy a day of Paris instead of going to the second day at the event, thereby missing out on the session on Processing by Douglas Eric Stanley which I would have liked to attend, and the closing event with amazing work from Erik Natzke. Too bad I didn’t see those 2, but it didn’t make much sense to me to go to the Centre Pompidou at 2PM to see the first session for 45 minutes, then have nothing interesting on for 5 hours and finally enjoying an hour of Natzke at 8PM.

Nope, the Web Flash Festival was a 1-time-thing for me. But nevertheless I’m glad I went over there to know what it was like, and I’ve been to Paris once more, which is never a bad thing

Last Saturday I saw Carlos Ulloa at WFF doing a talk on Papervision3D. Carlos is the founder of this amazing project, and it was very interesting to hear him talk about how it all started and where PPV3D is heading in the near future.

Carlos worked for many years at Sony in London as a game developer/designer. It wasn’t untill Spark Europe in Amsterdam in november 2005 where the idea arose that it would be cool to have a good 3D engine for Flash, and Papervision3D was born. The first one to join Carlos to kick off the project was Joost Korngold (better known as renascent), and on December 1st 2006, PPV3D was first published as Open Source on OSFLash under the MIT license.

The team was quickly joined by John Grden and Ralph Hauwert, and in no time hundreds of other people jumped on the bus. PPV3D now has over 2000 bèta testers and it’s still groing.

The objectives for PPV3D were clear from the start: it had to be powerful and easy to use. People – especially people trying out Open Source software – tend to download a software and start to play around with it for a couple of minutes, and if they’re not able to get going with it really quickly they’ll just throw it away and never look at it again. So to make sure this wouldn’t be the case with PPV3D, the developers payed a lot of attention to the fact that people should be able to pick it up and start playing with it quickly.

To make it powerful, the team chose the following approach:

• production driven design
• optimized for high performance
• linear texture mapping
• hierarchy, instances and materials management

To provide ease of use, they remained aware of the fact that both developers and designers were going to be using the software, and provided features that would benefit both of them.
For developers, this is using an AS3-style syntax and making sure there are no maths required to make it work.
For designers, they made it so designers could use their own 3D package, create & modify stuff without having to recompile the SWF, and prototype their scenes easily.

Carlos then went into some of the deeper details of the framework, showing how it was architectured and how you can use it to build some truly amazing stuff. It would take me too far to describe the whole framework here, so I’d suggest you download it yourself and try it out. And you’ve seen it and used it, I guarantee you you’re hooked!

Papervision 3D release 1.0 is being tested for 4 months now, and only has some minor bugs still to be fixed, but the developers want it to be rock-solid when it’ll be released to the world. So for the final 1.0 release you’ll have to hang on to your socks for a little while still.

Carlos, thanks for the inspiring session and keep up the amazing work!

Just saw Erik’s session at the WFF in Paris. All I can say is WOW! So inspiring, so impressive, it rocked my world!

Must say that I’m glad I didn’t give up on the festival after the dissapointing kick-off this morning!
Erik showed the evolution of his own work, from the time he himself just started out ’till now. He started off by saying that he was originally a pure designer with no programming skills whatsoever. Animations he built in Flash were built using keyframes on the timeline, which led up to enormous FLA files using hundreds of keyframes to create his animations.

He then realized there had to be a better way of doing things, and started looking into ActionScript.

Getting to know his way around more and more in the language, he became a better animator, but he was also constantly searching for “the extra mile”. How could something that looked really good be turned into something even better?
The answer, maybe surprisingly, was math and physics.

Experimenting with gravity, easing, elasticity and other Laws of Nature he evolved into a true Flash Artist.
He showed some examples of where he was given a jellyfish by a client which he had to animate. To make it as realistic as possible, he needed to have an effect of the tentacles moving around in the water, and that meant doing collision detection on lines in Flash. Another VERY impressive demo was where he would take a bitmap in Flash, mouse over the image generating vector data from it using his code, print it out to PostScript (in Flash and import it into Illustrator, where it then could be scaled to any size.

The show ended with a quick preview of the closing session for this event tomorrow morning. Generated images, all from Flash, accompanied by awsome music.

I can’t really explain to you just how great this was, so I recorded a little video which I’ll be posting tonight from my hotel room (hope the video is ok).

UPDATE: Sorry dear readers, but the video recording failed
I’ll need to get myself a better camera. So no video, sorry…

Erik, if you’re reading this, a big THANK YOU for the amazing display and the inspiration you bring to us all!!

By the way, the other cool dude on the picture is my respected colleague Stefan Verbakel, a young design genius. Be sure to check out his blog from time to time too. It’s been a little quiet there lately, but I’ll get him to write again and I can assure you it’s worth the read!

Bonjour, chèrs spectateurs!

Don’t understand what’s written above? If you’ve read my other post on Aral’s session at MultiMania yesterday, you know what to do: use the web and all it’s great software to find the translation.

Currently, the Web Flash Festival is going on at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. We’re here with 11 guys from our company, so the ambience is great! Just watched a video of past contestors and winners in the Flash animation category, and I’m sorry to say, it sucked

I don’t like to bash people, and I do hope this event is going to be better as the day advances, but first impressions are far from great. There’s (almost) no one here (around 40 visitors for the moment I guess), there’s no “schwung”, just not a creative atmosphere, and the quality of the work displayed so far was far below expectation.

This afternoon, Eric Natzke is going to do a session, that almost can’t be bad… let’s hope so!
I’ll keep you posted!