Anyone remember Saffron? I was never certain if this project was ever going to come to fruition, so lately I was thinking excessively about making my own. I started searching for inspiration in other UML tools so I could design a better user interface. Low and behold, I stumble across UML4AS, a brand spanking new project that does just what I was planning of doing.
It integrates completely with Eclipse (and Flash Builder) and has this neat feature called CodeSync that makes sure your model and code is always persisted between each other. In other words, everything works together in an integrated workflow to save you time.
I’ll have to dig deeper, try this out on projects and do a complete review. In the meantime, please support this initiative by registering and posting on the forum.
For those who have used Parsley as their application framework knows just how powerful it can be. However, there is something that has annoyed me slightly over time.
When I’m designing a system, I always try to use proper Flex practices. Practices like using MVC to separate components and business logic, making components truly encapsulated and reusable, etc. The problem that I find with Parsley is that it only allows you to use Injection based views for its MVC architecture; the View knows something, either a Presenter or a Model, and it’s always injected in by the Context. The problem is, if you have several projects that need the same components but different frameworks, you can’t freely interchange those components between projects since the view is tightly intertwined with the Parsley injection.
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When Flex 4 beta was released, I glanced over it quickly and sighed at several facts about it. I didn’t use it in my work since using beta software in enterprise applications would essentially signing my death warrant. I noticed a lot of other blogs mention the pros and cons about it. My biggest gripe about it was the new class prefix (FxApplication, etc). I’m happy to say that adobe listened to the community and instead just added a new namespace (s:Application).
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Every year, I try to attend FITC Toronto to learn, play, network and recharge my creative battery. There’s a lot of things that you can learn about the industry and the technology at this amazing conference.
Now, let’s do a small recap; in 2007, not long after the introduction of AIR, an ambitious project surfaced called Saffron. This was a sexy Flash UML tool built with AIR that could be used to plan, architect and design large applications. The creator, Samuel Agesilas, wasn’t talking much about details but he did show the Flash world a glimpse of his project. Shortly after though, it had seemed that Samuel went completely offline. Rumors started to surface that Samuel and his project was bought by Microsoft so that he can make a sexy, functional UML tool for Silverlight. Nobody could confirm or deny it, Samuel wasn’t there to comment.
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Flash vs Silverlight vs HTML5; a no-holds barred grudge match is brewing in this industry. It will divide developers and companies where there was little contention in the past. I doubt that this will end in a fatality, but the injuries will most likely fall to Adobe because of its current dominance in the field. Each technology has its pros and cons, and multiple providers can co-exist, but companies need a reason to choose one over another. I predict most of the debate will be based around the development process; ease of development, quick prototyping, effectiveness of tools offered, development environments, unit testing, system integration, as well as application design and planning. If a company can make great applications in less time, it means that they can make more money.
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