Move over, Ajax. Here comes Microsoft’s ‘Kojax’

Let me start out by saying I don’t know whether Microsoft will finally decide to sell a Microsoft-branded Windows Mobile phone. (Company officials have gone back and forth over that idea for more than a year.) But I do know that the Softies have some other interesting phone-related developments in the works.

I’m not talking about Windows Mobile 6.5 or 7.0 (or even Pink or Rouge). Instead, the latest Microsoft mobile-related development about which I’m most intrigued is codenamed “Kojax.”

Kojax is a mobile development platform, according to my sources, that will allow Microsoft- — and third-party-developed — applets run in an Ajax-like way, using a combination of Visual Studio tools and JavaScript, on Java-based mobile phones.

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ARM to get Flash

Adobe and ARM are gonna put Flash Player 10 and AIR, the stuff of web video and rich Internet apps, on ARM widgets by the second half of next year. They mean phones, set-tops, MIDs, TVs, car mojo and personal media devices, which have so far only had access to Flash Lite, not the best in browsing. iPhone happens to be based on ARM though whether that'll be true a year from now is unclear since Apple bought Power chipmaker PA Semi.

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MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 3 Beta Coming Soon

4 days ago the MSXML Team announced that they are getting ready to release the MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 3 Beta very soon. Unfortunately no dates, so no one knows when to expect. Also i remained unclear why when MS released MSXML6 we still need to have MSXML4? What I'm missing?

MSXML4 SP3 is a complete replacement of previous MSXML 4.0 service packs. The new service pack includes:

• A number of security bug fixes
• Reliability improvements

The Beta will be available on Microsoft Download Center in the very near future.  The RTM release is scheduled in the next few months.

MSXML 4 SP3 is applicable to the following Windows Operation Systems:

• Windows 2000 SP4
• Windows XP SP2
• Windows XP SP3
• Windows Server 2003 SP1
• Windows Server 2003 SP2
• Windows Vista RTM
• Windows Vista SP1
• Windows 2008

See also

• XML Team Blog

PureMVC file templates for FlashDevelop

gencha wrote 3 small file templates for the AS3Project in FlashDevelop.

They come in quite handy when working on a PureMVC based project.

• PureMVC-Command.as.fdt
• PureMVC-Mediator.as.fdt
• PureMVC-Proxy.as.fdt

Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can!

Image of Analytics Flash Visual Component in Flash CS3

Today, at the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with our friends at Adobe and a few ace third party developers, we announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content for everyone, called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

Working at Google over the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to work with with many of our top clients to implement Google Analytics, who have found the power to identify and analyze trends on their web sites highly useful. But, one of the most common implementation challenges has been tracking Flash content on their pages. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working. With this launch, tracking your Flash content has never been simpler.

Supported Platforms

We know there are many levels of experience in the Flash/Flex community so we tried to make it easy for both non-technical designers as well as seasoned ActionScript programmers to take full advantage of this Google Analytics Tracking For Flash. We've provided tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex which can be downloaded as a ZIP file here. The libraries include:

• Flash visual component
• Flash AS3 library
• Flex MXML component
• Flex AS3 library

And you can learn more about how to use them through this developer documentation.

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Microsoft Ships Robotics Developer Studio 2008

By Darryl K. Taft | Source: eWeek

Microsoft releases its updated robotics platform, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, at the RoboDevelopment Conference. Microsoft RDS includes a simple programming model to support building asynchronous applications, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools to aid in application development, and tutorials and sample code to help developers get started.

At the RoboDevelopment Conference & Expo, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, the newest version of its RDS robotics programming platform.

Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group, discussed the Microsoft robotics platform with eWEEK at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in October, hinting at the pending release of an updated Microsoft RDS.

Microsoft released the new version of Microsoft RDS on Nov. 17, at the RoboDevelopment Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. The release includes a simple programming model to support building asynchronous applications, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools to aid in application development, and tutorials and sample code to help developers get started.

This is the third major release of Microsoft RDS and builds upon its previous versions, which have received support throughout the robotics community, including students, researchers and commercial developers, Trower said. More than 250,000 copies of Microsoft RDS have been downloaded and more than 60 hardware and software companies support or use the platform as a part of their products.

"This latest release is a demonstration of Microsoft's continued commitment and investment in supporting the emerging new robotics community," Trower said. "We have used the very positive response to enhance what we offer, in hopes that it will continue to provide a common ground and catalyst for the future of personal robotics."

Microsoft RDS 2008 includes enhancements such as increased run-time performance, up to three times faster; improvements to the VPL (Visual Programming Language) tool; improvements to the VSE (Visual Simulation Environment) tool; and greater deployment flexibility in the way of support for both Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, improved support for running VPL and VSE on 64-bit Windows platforms, and new support for custom message transports.

Trower said a core objective of Microsoft RDS is to provide a common ground that creates opportunities for greater contributions and participation from across the diverse community of robotics developers and hardware and software vendors.

For instance, ABB, a leading supplier of industrial robots and robotics software, is among the first companies to take advantage of this opportunity by releasing a connectivity package called ACM (ABB Connect to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008). ACM creates a virtual environment for educational purposes, with the goal of teaching robotics students at universities to design and implement virtual robotics. The package also will contain all the services needed to build a complete virtual robot controller, ABB said.

"Generation Y students approach their education in a unique manner, based on intuition and innovation. ABB Connect gives these students tools to experiment with creative robot designs in a virtual world," said Bertil Thorvaldsson, product manager for ABB. "This is the beginning of a very exciting future for robotics. We're eager to see what students create and to be working with Microsoft in developing this new frontier."

Microsoft said the latest release of Microsoft RDS also offers improved licensing options by replacing its noncommercial and commercial licenses with three editions: a Standard Edition for professional developers, an Academic Edition for students and educational researchers, and an Express Edition for hobbyists and casual users. While with previous versions the user was allowed to distribute only 200 copies of the CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) and DSS (Decentralized Software Services) run-times, each license of the new Standard and Academic editions permits the user to distribute an unlimited number of copies of the CCR and DSS run-times, Trower said.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Standard Edition is available for $499.95 at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics, or from Microsoft's Volume Licensing program starting in February 2009. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Express Edition will be available for no charge and downloadable from the same site. More information about the release and distribution of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Academic Edition is also available at the same site.

Microsoft released IIS Media Pack

IIS Media Pack 1.0 provides media-specific extensions that make delivering media from IIS simple, and cost-effective.  Building on the security, reliability and manageability of IIS 7.0, IIS Media Pack protects media assets as it increases scalability by supporting more concurrent users per server.  IIS supports all media file types, including WMV, FLV, and MP4, and provides a great way to use your existing Web infrastructure to deliver compelling rich media content to clients such as Microsoft Silverlight.

With IIS 7.0 and IIS Media Pack 1.0, you can:

• Save bandwidth costs by throttling the speed at which content is downloaded
• Decrease network traffic by metering your media deliveries
• Monetize media assets with Web playlists that personalize content and prevent ad skipping
• Intelligently deliver multiple media formats from a single server, including .wmv, .flv, and .mp4 files

Downloads:

• 32bit - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2CF81F25-1692-41F7-B916-DB5C7E44E6EA&displaylang=en
• 64bit - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=93D59F79-9555-473D-A07A-E21020D1FC25&displaylang=en

Actionscript Cookie Util

Source: in:flex Blog

The Util comes with methods for setting, getting and removing cookies - as mentioned before you do not have to change a single line in your wrapper, just import the class and start setting cookies from flash or flex.

import de.aggro.utils.CookieUtil;  
//Set a cookie named mycookie with a value of mycookie value with a time to live of 30 days 
CookieUtil.setCookie("mycookie", "mycookie value", 30);  
//Get that cookie and trace its value 
trace(CookieUtil.getCookie("mycookie"));  
//Delete the cookie from the users computer 
CookieUtil.deleteCookie("mycookie");

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Microsoft considers adopting WebKit for Internet Explorer

By Prince McLean, AppleInsider Magazine

Addressing a developer conference in Sydney Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the idea of using WebKit as the rendering engine within its web browser was "interesting" and added "we may look at that."

Ballmer chanted his hallmark line "developers, developers, developers" to engage participants at the Power to Developers event, but was apparently caught off guard when a student attendee posed a question about Microsoft's own internal development efforts.

The student put Ballmer on the hot seat by asking, "Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"

"That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky," Ballmer replied, according to a report by TechWorld. Ballmer explained that Microsoft would need to consider the future of the browser and determine if there is any lack of innovation for the company to capitalize upon with 'proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.'

"There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service," Ballmer said, adding, "Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8."

Ballmer also admitted the delays in moving from IE 6 to IE 7 during the development of Vista under the Longhorn project. "But I don't what to go there," he said.

While Microsoft rapidly developed IE up to version six in 2001, new innovation stalled after the apparent death of the rival Netscape browser between 2000 and 2001.

The lull in Microsoft's browser efforts afforded Mozilla the opportunity to release and refine the Netscape code into what became Firefox in 2003. During the same period, KDE shipped the fast and lean KHTML browser engine, a project Apple built upon to create WebKit, the rendering engine behind Safari 1.0, also released in 2003. That web browser renaissance spurred Microsoft to deliver a new version of IE in 2006.

WebKit has subsequently been chosen by a number of developers to serve as the foundation for their web browsers and other web related tools. That includes Nokia's mobile browser, Google's new Chrome, and of course the mobile Safari browser used by Apple's iPhone.

Embracing WebKit as the basis for new generations of IE would enable Microsoft to benefit from its standards compliance and raw speed, while still enabling the software giant to extend its features with proprietary extensions, just as Apple's Safari browser adds unique features such as bookmark management and syncing, Dashboard Widget clipping, and SnapBack.

It would also give Microsoft a functional mobile browser to replace Windows Mobile's Pocket IE, a poorly regarded and nearly unusable product based on a very old version of Microsoft's proprietary web engine.

Adopting the WebKit rendering engine in IE would also dramatically simplify the work currently required of web developers, who have to test their code to work properly against both web standards and the quirky behaviors of the various versions of IE. Additionally, WebKit would give Microsoft a top performing JavaScript engine necessary for handling the next generation of web apps, such as those based on SproutCore.

Hobnox - this is ass kicking

Source: The Strange Attractor

 
A pretty robust modular music production app in your browser.  Synths, drum machines, effects pedals. . .  shows the potential Actionscript 3 has with audio.
This is connected to a whole creative community type thing with forums and user generated content and the whole bit.