Author Archives: kousikraj

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About kousikraj

Director & Chief Enterprise Architect at Sphata Systems. Expert in building Cloud based Solutions, Product Engineering, enterprise platforms, RIA, Mobile and Healthcare Applications.

Adobe Unveils AIR on Mobile Devices; Readies Flash Player 10.1 for Launch

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For immediate release

Close to 70 Industry Leaders Collaborate Toward Open Mobile Ecosystem

BARCELONA, Spain. — Feb. 15, 2010 — At Mobile World Congress™ 2010, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced advancements to the Adobe® Flash® Platform including the unveiling of Adobe® AIR® on mobile devices, a consistent runtime for standalone applications to come out of the Open Screen Project™, an industry-wide initiative led by Adobe that has grown to close to 70 ecosystem partners. With support for the Android™ platform expected in 2010, AIR provides developers with a feature-rich environment for delivering rich applications outside the mobile browser and across multiple operating systems via mobile marketplaces and app stores. AIR leverages mobile specific features from Flash® Player 10.1, is optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer and more immersive user experience.

Adobe also announced that a beta of Flash Player 10.1 was made available to content providers and mobile developers worldwide. With the general availability expected in the first half of 2010, Flash Player 10.1 is the first consistent runtime release of the Open Screen Project enabling uncompromised Web browsing of expressive applications, content and high definition (HD) videos across screens including new tablet devices, smartphones, netbooks, smartbooks, desktops and other consumer electronics. According to a Strategy Analytics analysis from January 2010, more than 250 million smartphones are expected to support the full Flash Player by the end 2012. Mobile platforms that will support the full Flash Player include Android, the BlackBerry® platform, Symbian® OS, Palm® webOS and Windows Mobile®. Partners from across the ecosystem commented on the progress of Flash Player 10.1 today.

“We are excited about the progress with Flash Player 10.1 and the work that developers, content publishers and close to 70 partners in the Open Screen Project have done so far as part of the beta program,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business at Adobe. “With the Flash Platform further advancing on mobile devices, we enable developers and content publishers to deliver to any screen, so that consumers have open access to their favorite interactive media, content, and applications across platforms.”

Adobe AIR enables developers to deliver Web applications outside the constraints of a browser. With support for mobile devices Adobe AIR includes specific functionality offered by mobile operating systems and devices such as multi-touch, gesture inputs, accelerometer, geolocation and screen orientation. With Flash Platform tooling and the Adobe Creative Suite®, developers and content publishers are able to create, test and deliver applications to multiple devices and operating systems using a single tool chain and API set across platforms. Developers using Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5 with the Adobe Packager for iPhone can reuse their iPhone application code to create the same application for Android.

“Adobe AIR 2.0 is a great technology for developing engaging mobile applications,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president, Software Applications and Ecosystem at Motorola. “We look forward to seeing AIR come to the Android platform and developers creating applications that will delight our end-users.”

Extending the functionality supported in Adobe AIR to mobile devices allows developers to easily create contextual applications that are characterized by their ability to adapt presentation and performance to different application contexts while reusing code for each device or platform. Application contexts include different display screens, device-specific interaction techniques, functionality specific to the mobile platform, as well as differences in network access and bandwidth. Content can also be personalized based on user history or social data. For more information about contextual applications visit www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/context_apps.

Links:

About Adobe Flash Platform
The Adobe Flash Platform is the leading Web design and development platform for creating expressive applications, content, and video that run consistently across operating systems and devices and reach over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops. Flash Player 10 was installed on more than 93 percent of computers in just the first ten months since its release. According to comScore Media Metrix®, approximately 75 percent of online videos viewed worldwide are delivered using Adobe Flash technology, making it the No. 1 format for video on the Web. Adobe AIR for the desktop has been installed on more than 200 million computers and adopted across industries by leading companies such as Atlantic Records, DIRECTV, FedEx, The New York Times Company and salesforce.com. For more information about the Adobe Flash Platform visit www.adobe.com/flashplatform.

Open Screen Project
Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project includes close to 70 industry leaders working together to provide a consistent runtime environment across mobile phones, desktops and other consumer electronic devices. The initiative addresses the challenges of Web browsing and standalone applications on a broad range of devices, and removes the barriers to publishing content and applications seamlessly across screens. New partners include Disney Media Interactive Group, Nickelodeon, ESPN, MTV.com, Southpark, Symbian Foundation, Freescale, Vizio, MIPS Technologies, Wind River, Addicting Games, Imagination Technologies, Epix, PBS and others. For more information about the Open Screen Project visit www.openscreenproject.org.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

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© 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, Flash Platform, Flash Player, Creative Suite Flash Professional, and Adobe AIR are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Implementation Spotlight: Telensa

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Rising energy and maintenance costs due to aging street lighting equipment are some among many of the reasons local authorities are choosing to invest in PLANet — ‘Public Lighting Active Network’ from Telensa. Using a robust Ext-based user interface to control up to 150,000 lights wirelessly, PLANet from Telensa can measure each lamp individually and switch on any combination of lamps within seconds. Get a unique insight into the development challenges faced at Telensa using Ext JS as their front-end of choice.

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A typical readings page — supply voltages are recorded by every telecell

We needed to choose a library that was consistent in the way that it presents information to the user, but also consistent in the way that you code using the library.

Tell us a little bit about PLANet and your goals for the application.

PLANet is a street lighting telemanagement system, for remote control and monitoring of street lights. Telecells are installed on street lights as replacements to photocells. These establish wireless connection to a base station, which is a central radio that can also be installed on a street lighting column. A base station can accommodate up to 10,000 telecells over a ranges of 2-3km (urban) and 5-8km (rural). Numerous base stations make up a single system.

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PLANet System status page

Base stations connect over regular IP network links to a central system, which runs the overall system. The central system is also a web server and provides the web based user interface. Because of the nature of the system and its eventual possible use by local police, fire departments and authorities, the main challenge throughout has been focused around performance, robustness and fail safe mechanisms.

Efficiency and CO2 reduction benefits

PLANet gives street lighting operators tight control of their lights which translates into a highly energy efficient system – the lights can be programmed to switch on only when needed depending on the time of day, the day of the week, the season, the light level or even the occasion. How much of an energy saving this could make will depend on how aggressive the lighting policies are, but we estimate that using PLANet could help reduce a local authority’s street light energy consumption by up to 40%. This is not an insignificant number when you consider, for example, that the annual energy consumed by all of Europe’s street lights is estimated at 35TWh representing some 1.3% of all electricity consumption.

Why did you choose Ext JS?

Given the wide range of JavaScript libraries available it was important to choose the right one. We needed to choose a library that was consistent in the way that it presents information to the user, but also consistent in the way that you code using the library.

With all Ext components extending the ‘Observable’ class we had the ability to write consistent code in an event-driven manner, much like writing a desktop application, not easily achieved with other libraries. What’s more is that we knew it would work cross-browser, again something not easily achieved that saves countless hours on large projects.

The PLANet application is extremely feature-rich. How did you manage the UI code complexity?

Most PLANet pages make good use of the Ext grid component. In fact, the grid is probably the most central component to the entire application and it was important that we managed the code around this component in as clean a way as possible. Because of the number of columns, each usable multiple time across many grid instances, we collected together all the column definitions into a central file as to only define them once, but use them multiple times. We did this with all fields across the application, including grid columns, text fields, HTML fields and combo boxes. To make the process of changing multiple fields easier and less error prone, we decided to generate the field definitions from the database. This means that each field is defined in the database, before running through a UI build process to make it into a JavaScript file that is included in each web page. Using this process we can manage the generation of UI fields from the database, which means we can control system upgrades from the DB in the future.

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Any single street lamp or configured group of lamps can be switched on within seconds

What other techniques did you use to achieve consistency throughout the UI?

Despite significant use of the database to generate UI components, we also extended the grid in other ways to provide state saving, filtering and export functionality.

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Custom extensions for state, filtering and export

Each grid can be exported to CSV, taking into account current state and filtering. State of the grid is saved upon each change and when the page is unloaded. In addition, each grid layout can be saved to the database using a simple drop down menu. Filtering is made easy through the use of Ext.Window, with different filters appearing based on the column data type.

What features could we add to Ext to make building a rich application like PLANet easier in the future?

We have found that as we expand the way we want to work with the library, the library is expanding to meet our needs, reminding us why we chose Ext in the first place.

Once an application gets over a certain size, and customer releases become more frequent, the burden of testing the application starts to take its toll. An Ext supported test suite would save huge amounts of time. The current problem of test suites with Ext is being able to reliably predict the automatic ids that Ext generates for page elements. Test tools are beginning to implement support for CSS selectors to overcome this problem, but few currently exist. Ext could provide better documentation on how to build better test cases with Ext so that more time can be spent on development rather than testing.

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Lamp Types — dimmable and non-dimmable street lamps are supported

Do you have any advice for developers using Ext for the first time?

Ext can be used by Web Application developers who are familiar with HTML but may have little or no experience with JavaScript application development. If you are starting to build a new web application, or you are revamping an existing application, then take your time to understand the basics of the library including:

  • Understanding the major UI components (grid, form, tree etc)
  • How to integrate your existing data with Ext
  • How to use Ext Layouts
  • The Ext Component Model

Of course, there is only one real way to learn, and that is to get on and do it!

Final thoughts?

As we move on to what is our third major release of PLANet, we are starting to develop with Ext in new and exciting ways. We are loading JavaScript code dynamically from the server as part of a wizard for controlling switching programs of the street lights. We have found that as we expand the way we want to work with the library, the library is expanding to meet our needs, reminding us why we chose Ext in the first place.