David Tucker on AIR and Flex Camp Miami
Posted on Jan 28, 2009
Flex Camp Miami
is a little over a month away and we have an incredible lineup of
speakers including some very well known names in the Flex and AIR
community. This interview will be the first in a series of speaker
interviews that will offer some detail about their session but also
allow us the opportunity to dig deeper into each speakers specific
interests and areas of expertise.
This week we have David Tucker from Universal Mind. David is the author of the recently released Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook and a regular contributor to InsideRIA,
including their Weekly RIA RoundUp podcast. David also did the Lynda
training series on "AIR for Flash Developers." David and I discuss his
upcoming session at Flex Camp Miami as well as some reasons AIR is a compelling option for startups and some of our favorite AIR applications.
Brian Rinaldi
Your session at Flex Camp Miami is called "Working with Data in AIR," can you tell me about it?
David Tucker
Basically,
I wanted to have a session that talked about the ways that you can work
with data in AIR that you can't in Flex (at least by default). AIR
opens a lot of doors with the embedded SQLite database, the encrypted
local store, and the file system. Learning how to integrate these into
your application might be a bit new for many Flex developers.
Brian Rinaldi
You were the author of the Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook for O'Reilly; will you be drawing on some of the examples you illustrated in the book?
David Tucker
Yes.
Some of the items in the book will certainly be present in the
session. For example, many developers haven't had a chance to work with
the new encrypted database support that was introduced in AIR 1.5. I
will cover some of the basic examples from the book before looking at
some more advanced implementations.
Brian Rinaldi
You
mention in your description on the site that you will be discussing
some ORM options. I have read a little about some ORM's being developed
for AIR, are there any full-featured ORMs available for AIR yet?
David Tucker
There
are a few great solutions being developed by the community. I don't
know that any of them would be considered 'full-featured' yet, but they
are getting closer. I will be looking at these different options in
the session and will be explaining when they would be useful - and when
they wouldn't be.
Brian Rinaldi
Lately I have noticed
AIR gaining traction particularly with start-ups like, for example,
Yammer. Do you think this is true and, if so, why do you think they are
choosing AIR over the other options?
David Tucker
Absolutely.
I think many start-ups are choosing AIR for two reasons. First, they
choose AIR because of its cross-platform support. They can develop an
application from a single code base, and have it deployed onto Windows,
Mac, or Linux machines. The time saved over building native
applications is huge. Second, because you can develop from a single
code base and also because AIR has support for application updating, it
allows these companies to get an application in the hands of users
quickly. They also can update often as they add new features. This
allows them to implement more of an 'agile' style for desktop
development (something seen more often on in web development).
Brian Rinaldi
Can you tell me what AIR apps you use on a daily or regular basis?
David Tucker
Sure.
I use TweetDeck to keep up with everything RIA related in the Twitter
world. I also use the Tick Desktop time tracking application from
Tickspot.com (in full disclosure - I wrote this one). In addition, I
use Parleys and the Adobe Media Player to catch up on some great RIA
related tutorials from time to time.
Brian Rinaldi
Interesting,
I wasn't aware of some of those. Personally, I use Twhirl and Yammer
daily, an AIR app I wrote for doing my weekly open-source update weekly
and have lately started trying Balsamiq Mockups which I found an
impressive example of what AIR can do.
David Tucker
I
also have an AIR app in development that will be assisting me in
preparing the Weekly RIA RoundUp Podcast for InsideRIA. That is one of
the awesome things about AIR is that in a small amount of time you can
easily write an application that can help with everyday tasks!
Brian Rinaldi
I agree completely. In fact I have an article currently being edited for the Edge Journal discussing that specific topic.
David Tucker
Writing a native application to do the same thing (in most cases) just wouldn't be worth it.
Brian Rinaldi
Well,
we are very excited that you can make it to Flex Camp Miami. For those
readers who don't know, you very recently had twins. We're sorry we
have to take you away from them for a little while to come speak to our
event. How are the babies doing?
David Tucker
They are
doing well. It has been quite an adjustment - although I am learning
to change diapers between conference calls and how to type more
efficiently with one hand while holding one. Overall, we are very
blessed!
Brian Rinaldi
Thanks for your time David and we'll see you at Flex Camp Miami.
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