jun :: realeyes

David was kind enough to blog more detailed information on the FMS modules releasd with REDbug 0.63.

You can find his details here: http://david.realeyes.com/?p=93

Here’s my previous post on REDbug 0.63: http://www.iheartair.com/?p=242

You can download REDbug 0.63 here: http://www.redbugtool.com/

Also, if you read his post, you will see reference to a RealEyes Connections Management framework.  Specifically this note at the bottom of the post:

“If anyone is interested in the RealEyes Connections Management framework let me know and I may be swayed to release it sooner rather than later.”

Just so you know…

The Dynamic Media Camp is looking for attendees interested in all things Adobe streaming video, just take a look at the sessions that will be offered:

• Video for Flash with CS4 – Paul Trani, Starz
• High Impact Motion Web Graphics – Speaker to be Announced
• Flash Media Server 3.5 Dynamic Streaming & DVR – Kevin Towes, Adobe
• Deploying Video Using a Content Delivery Network – Level 3
• Enterprise Encoding & Encrypting – Jun Heider & David Hassoun, RealEyes Media
• Building Flash Video Players Progressive & Streaming (2-hour Hands On Session) – David Hassoun, RealEyes Media
• Flash Media Panel Q&A – Adobe, RealEyes, and More

Kevin Towes the product manager for Adobe streaming video products will be there, speaking, and giving away a copy of Adobe CS4 Production Premium!

In addition, I’ll be there speaking about DRM protected FLV and F4V content, along with Mr. FMS himself and just to show my appreciation for those of you that are interested in registering, I’m providing you with a reinstated early bird discount code. From now until Friday June 5th you can apply the discount code speakerFriend when you register and you’ll get 20% off!

So what are you waiting for?  Register now: http://camp.rmaug.com/register

I just posted a new build of REDbug console which can be found here: http://www.redbugtool.com

It’s build 0.63 and with it comes a new module called RED FMS Connectioner.  This makes two REDbug modules used to debug and test video and Flash Media Server related items.

Here’s a couple quick screenshots:

RED FMS Tester Module

RED FMS Connectioner Module

That being said, I’m going to let you in on the fact that I had nothing to do with either of these two modules.  They were the product of my good friend and employer David Hassoun…a.k.a. Mr. FMS:

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/dynstream_advanced_pt1.html
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/dynstream_advanced_pt2.html
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/hd_video_flash_player.html
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/live_dvr_pt1.html
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/live_dvr_pt2.html

My point is, I merged his FMS goodness in and spit out the new 0.63 build, updated the installer badge on the REDbug site, and for existing users running 0.62 or earlier there should now be a notification on app start regarding the new 0.63.

Moving forward, the plan is that David or I or some combination of us two will release some type of tutorial or screen cast in the near future. Until then, you’ll have to be a little adventurous and feel your way around the modules.  Keep an eye on his blog or mine we’ll let you know when there’s more details available.

Oh…and two last but very important points:

1. REDbug Console is still a BETA release.

2. At the moment everything is still free…so there’s no harm in trying REDbug Console.

Enjoy!

Although I am definitely thankful for the Flash Builder 4 Profiler, or should I say Flex Builder Gumbo MAX Preview Profiler, I posted a number of feature requests to the Adobe bug base today, 10 to be exact.  I’ve done the foot work and now all you gotta do is vote for the features you’d like to see in the Flash Builder 4 Profiler.  Let’s make some noise and kindly ask the Flash Builder team to further pimp out the Profiler:

• Flash Builder 4 Profiler – Additional Documentation Requests (http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20010)
• Object References View: Implement the ability to expand/collapse all children of a selected node (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19987)
• Support for Overlay in Profiler views (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20001)
• Object References View: Implement a keyword search tool in the Profiler (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19989)
• FB Profiler table based views: Implement a Quick Filter in the tool bar (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19991)
• Inclusion/Exclusion Filters: Apply to all views of session (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19998)
• Enhanced visual indicators: Linking open profiler views with the corresponding session in Profile view (http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20008)
• Choose to use 24-hour format timestamps or 12-hour timestamps in the Profiler but not both. (http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20009)
• Connection Established Dialog should remember user setttings until explicit change or Flash Builder is closed. (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20003)
• Ability to bypass the Connection Established dialog during a Flash Builder session. (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-20005)

Also, while you’re there, feel free to vote on any of these pre-existing issues (Especially the first and second items):

• Long profiler operations should not run on the UI thread (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-17854)
• If a container contains a lot of children, Flex profiler doesn’t display the class in ‘Live Objects view’ and ‘Memory Usage graph’ doesn’t show correctly. (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-18958)
• Profiler: can’t delete more than one session at a time (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-15323)
• Profiler should log errors to the Eclipse error log, not to the console (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-16109)

On a final note, if there’s things you’d like to see in the release of the Flash Builder 4 Profiler that’s not listed above, by all means, log it.  If you comment back here, I’ll give you a vote!

For those of you that aren’t used to using JIRA, the Adobe bugbase can seem very intimidating, especially when you’re trying to do things the right way or even worse, when you’re in a hurry.  All of us know before posting a new bug report, we should always search for a pre-existing bug.  Problem is, the quick search in JIRA searches the entire bug base.

Say you just wanted to do a keyword search for bugs related to Flex Builder Gumbo, or bugs only related to Current Memory Leaks.  There’s a pretty easy way to do it if you use the pre-existing filters.

Here’s a quick walkthrough:

1.  Go to https://bugs.adobe.com/ select the project, for instance Flex ( https://bugs.adobe.com/flex/ ).

2. Log in and you’ll be taken to your home page and on the right-hand side you’ll see a bunch of pre-made filters.  In this example we’re searching for bugs and enhancements specific to Flex Builder: Gumbo, so select that filter.

3. Once you select the filter you’ll be taken to all results having to do with Flex Builder: Gumbo.

4. Now, say you want to do a subset filter seach.  For instance Flex Builder: Gumbo tickets that have the keyword “export release”.  If you use the “Quick Search” tool at the top right you’ll find out that it will take you out of the filter context and show you “export release” against the whole bug base.  Instead, what you want to do is edit the filter.  This is done by clicking on Filter: Edit to the top left of the search results page.

5. From here you can tweak the filter, but in our case we type “export release” into the Query field.

6. Now we either hit enter, or click on the view button to see the filter results in the “Flex Builder: Gumbo” context and receive our results.

The nice part about finding bugs this way is it really whittles down the results.  For instance, using the “quick search” to find tickets that have “export release” returned 50 results, some of them tickets opened  during the Moxie beta, and some having to do with the Flash Player.  Searching just the Gumbo tickets whittled down the results to 12.

Granted, the issue might be legacy and it might be in a previous build, but frankly I’m busy doing billable work for my company, and if it comes to not filling the bug because I have to sort through 50 different tickets vs. 12, I think I’ll err on the side of seeing if it’s been logged against the release that I’m working with.

Anyway, hope this helps some of you with feeling more comfortable about posting bugs, and most importantly, at least making somewhat of an attempt to see if your bug exists before creating a new one.

I’ve uploaded the profiling samples I used to walk through memory profiling and performance profiling with the Flex Builder profiler.  (It’s a Flex Builder project archive)

For those of you that attended, you can use the AIR app that was on the USB key to get to the samples. (Just hit the home button)  For those of you that didn’t feel free to download them and the slides from the following page: http://www.iheartair.com/?page_id=197

As far as my thoughts on 360|Flex Indy, it was a very enjoyable conference.  Kudos to Tom and John because they’re big pimpin’ conference organizers!  I enjoyed seeing familiar faces while I was there in addition to meeting new ones.  Although I didn’t get to see as many sessions as I would have liked, the ones I saw were very good and/or entertaining.  Just to give you an idea of the sessions I enjoyed:

• Michael Labriola: Any Which Array but Loose
• Renaun Erickson: Structured Log Testing
• Adam Flater: Merapi is open! (That’s not the title, but here’s the deets.)
• Rich Tretola: Spy Camera Presentation
• Jeremy Saenz: Shedding Skins: Programmatic Skinning in Flex
• Jeff Tapper: How not to code Flex Applications
• Doug McCune: Cool Shit (Censored)

It’s a wrap…thanks again Tom and John!

360|Flex has been a wonderful time so far.  The sessions are great, and so are the parties.  Last night I sat down for some serious beer drinking with Doug McCune and was enlightened by a very interesting tidbit of information.  Apparently, his family has a history of royalty with the country of Albania.  According to their laws, if he had lived a couple centuries earlier, he could have been a prince!

That’s pretty bad-ass if you ask me, and a perfect example of the fun you can have while attending a 360|Flex conference…prince McCune, pretty interesting.

Crossing my fingers that this goes without a hitch, but the book that I’ve spent the last year working on with 7 other authors should be making a presence at 360|Flex Indy.  Read the full press release at Joe’s site.

If it does, I’ll be giving away a copy of the book at my Flex Application Profiling by Example session. This book, this bad-ass book is one I wrote a 34 page chapter on the Flex Profiler for and IMHO, that’s just scratching the surface of all the other cool bad-ass stuff you’ll find in it.

So, here’s the TODO list for ya:

1. Register for 360|Flex if you haven’t already.
2. Come to my session on Flex Profiling.
3. Get a chance to win a copy of Professional Flex 3.
4. If you’re the lucky one, enjoy the book, else feel free to pre-order it. (Although I linked to the publisher site since the cover snapshot is up to date, it’s cheaper to buy the book at Amazon.)

See you in Indy!

As I sit here and get my Flex Profiling session ready for next week, I just realized, 360|Flex is an incredible deal.  Not only do you get to attend THE Flex conference of 2009, but for the price of admission you also get the following:

• Almost 60 sessions of Flex, AIR and ActionScript goodness
• 4 days of conference sessions
• 4 days of lunch (great for networking)
• 3 evening receptions at Rock Bottom (again, great for networking)
• 2 (maybe more) product launches (Axiis and others)
• 1 Bug Quash event on Sunday (come make Flex better)
• 1 Flex 101 hands-on also on Sunday (to get you prepped for the week)
• 1 Charity Code Jam over the course of the show (to earn some Karma points)
• 1 USB drive jam packed with copies of the sessions and code samples, plus some extra surprises

What a steal!  So…get crackin’ and get yourself registered here: http://360flex.eventbrite.com/

See you in Indy!

I’m presenting the Intro to Flex Debugging and Profiling session at CFUnited this year.  Here’s a link to the description: http://cfunited.com/2009/topics/267

I recently received a questionnaire and wanted to share my thoughts with you all.

SPEAKER QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?  What would you tell someone who hasn’t been to CFUnited before?

I’ve never spoken at CFUnited before, but the reason I decided to was because I had heard so many good things about it in the past through the ColdFusion community.  I usually spend my time at Flex/AIR centric conferences, but it was good to find out that although ColdFusion is still a majority of what CFUnited is about, it definitely isn’t the only thing.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

If you’re getting started with Flex and pull out your hair while trying to resolve issues in your code on a frequent basis, this will be a very good session for you to attend.  During the session I will be covering many aspects of debugging and profiling your Flex applications. By the end of the session you should walk away with a good idea of the tools available to you and how to get started with using them.

3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited?

Not personally, but hopefully Flex Builder 4 beta will be out by the conference.  If it is, the fancy new debugging and profiling features will definitely be covered.

4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to?

Just to name a few:
- AIR Messaging: Integrating AIR, BlazeDS, and ColdFusion
- Design Diagrams for CFC’s and Databases
- Subversion for Smarties – Do More With Subversion
- Practical Refactoring: Making Bad Code Good
- Advanced SQL for ColdFusion
- Flex and Google App Engine
- Using Design Patterns in Flex
- How not to code flex applications
- Blowing Your Mind With Merapi
- Busy Programers Guide to Java part 1

5. What are some of the hot topics you’d like to see at RoundTable discussions?

Hmm…maybe a good talk about Battlestar or one on the latest Star Trek movie and predictions on what the next Star Trek TV series will be about.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?  (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.)

At the bar or in a session, or in a session at the bar.

7. What’s the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited?

Yes, the change since the last CFUnited is that I actually get to come to CFUnited this time.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

I think the room names at CFUnited are really unique.  I mean, a room called “Galactica”?  That’s just rad!

9. When you are not working what do you like to do in your free time?

When I’m not working and/or taking care of my children I enjoy jamming and making music.  I also love my Xbox 360, Fallout 3 and the combat shotgun I get to use in it at point blank during VATS, oh yeah!

10. Feel free to make up your own question and then answer it.

Hmm…let’s see…how ’bout: What’s your favorite CFML tag of all time?

That would be <cfdump> baby…yeah!