derrick grigg

RIA Mockup software

Jul 31, 2008 . Comments (0)

If you develop RIA's and are looking for a great tool to quickly create a GUI mockup, look no further than Balsamiq Mockups. I am constantly looking for easy ways to bang out a quick application mockup so I can show it to clients and stakeholders. Typically I default to Powerpoint or Visio, both of which do not offer the variety of controls I need to properly illustrate what the GUI will look like.  Thankfully I will no longer have that problem.

Balsamiq Mockups is a super simple tool for creating great looking GUI mockups. The best part for me, as a Flex developer, is that it is a Flex and AIR application. It has most if not all of the "out of the box" components available in Flex Builder, so there is no need to waste time and effort drawing controls. You can simply drag them onto the stage and use them. Clicking on an item allows to change it's properties and items can be moved around, grouped and layered, just like in Visio. There are keyboard shortcuts for copying, pasting, deleting, etc. You can easily modify the data displayed in any control by clicking and typing, even create hierarchies in a Tree control.

Here's a quick demo on using the app.

When resizing a component the size is displayed on screen, which is super helpful.

To get an idea of what you can do with Mockups, check out the samples, awesome. The rough pencil drawn styling of the components is perfect, no one will accidently assume it's a finished product when you show them the mockups.

They have gotten some good press on Read Write Web and Web Worker Daily.

Giacomo, awesome job, can't wait to see what else you have in the works. Seeing applications like this, done with Flex and AIR just fuels my fire more for continuing down the RIA development path.

If you are an RIA developer, give this tool a look, it's well worth your time.

AS3 array to Java array Flash Remoting bug

Jul 16, 2008 . Comments (2)

I just stumbled across a very odd bug while using Flash remoting to pass AS3 data objects to Java. For each AS3 data object I have a corresponding Java data object, the two are carbon copies of each other and are mapped together on the AS3 side using the [RemoteClass(alias="com.dgrigg.vo.MyDataObject")] tag. If the AS3 object contains a public Array or ArrayCollection that has not been instantiated Flash remoting dies when trying to pass the object down to Java. Not entirely sure why but lesson learned, always instantiate Arrays and ArrayCollections in a data object before sending it down the wire.

If anyone knows why this happens I'd love to hear.

iShop therefore I am

Jul 07, 2008 . Comments (0)

Ok, bad rip from Rene Descartes, but sort of catchy. It's been a year since I began working with the team at MRN and I thought it would be a good time to give a little update on what I have been doing. A year ago the idea sounded great: create a scalable platform that could manage a multitude of e-commerce sites for various vertical markets that the company decided to market products to. For an application architect like myself it was a great opportunity, design and build the platform from the ground up and work with some great people. What is involved in building a platform like that? CRM/ERP integration, Flash/Flex/AIR development, AJAX/Json, Java, PHP, SQL, HTML and CSS to name a few. Fifteen sites down and more to go. Needless to say it has been a busy, challenging and rewarding year. Each day presents a new challenge, I have had to dust off some old skills and learn some new ones, which is never a bad thing.