Use with UI toolkit

[alex]

Here's another interesting [url=http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/ | Ajax library from Adobe]. It actually runs even on my amd64 http://www.mozilla.org/projects/deerpark/releases/alpha1.html ] Deer Park[/url.

[chrisdouglass]

Apollo alpha is out:
http://www.adobe.com/go/apollo

Running the samples... Looks good.

[alex]

> Apollo alpha is out:
> http://www.adobe.com/go/apollo
>
> Running the samples... Looks good.

Someone shoved this book in my bag at SD West. I've read the first chapter and it finally dawned (:idea:) at me what they are doing.

{QUOTE()}

So, by this point, you may be saying to yourself, “Gee, Apollo sure sounds great!
Why would anyone ever want to deploy an application to the browser again? Is Apollo the end of web applications within the browser?”
No.
Let’s repeat that again: no.

Apollo solves most of the problems with deploying web applications via the browser.
However, there are still advantages to deploying applications via the browser. The fact that there are so many web applications despite the disadvantages discussed earlier is a testament to the advantages of running within the browser. When those advantages outweigh the disadvantages, developers will still deploy their applications via the web browser.

But it is not necessarily an either/or question. Because Apollo applications are built using web technologies, the application that you deploy via the web browser can be quickly turned into an Apollo application. You can have a web-based version that provides the browser-based functionality, and then also have an Apollo-based version that takes advantage of running on the desktop. Both versions could leverage the same technologies, languages, and code base.

Apollo applications complement web applications. They do not replace them.

{QUOTE}

Apollo is very likely the next desktop application GUI platform."Classical" GUI apps will be around for a while (especially those with low-level requirements). So will the (D)HTML/Javascript web apps. Apollo is a bridge between browser/network and desktop.

It seems that WebWidget GUI is still a go, although with Apollo compatibility kept in mind.

[alex]

Flex has been open sourced

[chrisdouglass]

pretty interesting i think. i've played a Tiny amount with flex but have been so busy with my project I haven't had time to really dive in. although, i was checking the other day and the flash IDE i use, www.flashdevelop.com, now has support for doing Apollo builds. and that is very interesting to me right now.

i'll try to email you soon and get some help/pointers but i'm thinking about digging around and trying to integrate the poco sqlite data classes into a library that can talk to my flash app running on the desktop. this is a windows only solution initially.

however, if i can get it working well then i'd like to try and integrate the sqlite library with an Apollo port of my application. i'm still not sure what external api's Apollo exposes to hosts or external processes but hopefully there's some hooks there like the hooks in the latest flash runtime activeX control.

you know, i've been looking pretty hard at using .net with mono and abandoning the hybrid flash/apollo/c++ approach but i'm just not sure that's smart. the more i read about apollo and see how the flash tool now is more and more integrated with the adobe design tools, i think they really have an edge on the MS toolchain in the long run. plus, i'm not sure i want to get X percent complete with a mono port only to find something isn't going to be compatible with a lib/control i'm using. i don't have time for surprises right now.

btw, the silverlight tests i ran and the WPF gris/controls that i've tested perform VERY POORLY. xaml is designed well and is going to be nicely integrated into visual studio this year but i'll wait awhile to see how apollo compares to the MS toolset. so, i'm not going that route either. plus, i can only reach the mac going that route. i'd really like to get my app everywhere eventually and performance with poco/apollo would be exceptional in comparison.

one little thing too that i've put on the apollo side as a bonus is the PDF integration they're touting. for .net i'd have to buy a component for that. and i'm not sure, again, if that component would port to mono.

talk to you soon.

Chris

> Flex has been open sourced