I wanted to drop a quick post to let our community know that due to an overwhelming request, we have decided to hold another session of our Xcelsius Advanced Developer Workshop.  

Xcelsius Advanced Developer Workshop

(Sep 22- Sep 23 | Dallas, TX)

Mike Alexander (Author, Crystal Xcelsius For Dummies) and Loren Abdulezer(Author, Xcelsius Best Practices) will host a 2-day Xcelsius Advanced Developer Workshop, September 2010 in Dallas, TX!  This workshop sold out in March so make sure you get in early.  Here, you will get a ton of advanced Xcelsius tips and techniques – such as:

 • Learn how to enhance your data models with advanced Excel functions
• Learn powerful dashboard design and charting techniques
• Learn tricks that will help to optimize the performance of your Xcelsius dashboards 
• Connect to databases using full XML connectivity (Not just XML Maps)
• Embed Xcelsius dashboards into Excel and Access
• Learn how to pass parameters from one Xcelsius dashboard to another
• Learn how create detailed drill-throughs in Xcelsius  using encoded URLs
• Learn how to use your Xcelsius dashboards to write back to your server Much more…
Sign up before September 1st and get 25% discount off registration! 

We look forward to seeing you.  

By the way:  Leading up to this event, I will be posting some cool new tips and tricks here, so stay tuned!

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The problem:

You may develop a button, canvas, list box, tree viewer or other UI component in Flex, apply inline styling directives, package it up for use in Xcelsius and view it in the Xcelsius designer without issue.  However, when you enter runtime mode in Xcelsius, your component may lose some or all of its inline styles, rendering it partially unusable or invisible. This is due to the parent Flex Xcelsius application inadvertently stripping away styles at runtime.

The solution:

For a generic solution to skinning and styling reapplication, you’ll need to reference in your project library path, the haloclassic.swc swc in the Flex SDK directory (a path similar to this C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\2.0.1\frameworks\themes\haloclassic.swc). Once you have referenced the swc, create a CSS file for your component(s) that specifies all of the default skins and styles to their halo default or desired style as shown in the sample code below (full code here). This set of steps will need to be implemented as needed on a per-component basis if your components are experiencing style loss. Once you have defined your CSS file, the next step is to reference it in your component file as you would any other CSS asset.

.myButton {
backgroundAlpha: 1.0;
backgroundSize: “auto”;
bevel: true;
borderAlpha: 1.0;
borderCapColor: #919999;
borderColor: #B7BABC;
borderSides: “left top right bottom”;
borderSkin: ClassReference(“mx.skins.halo.HaloBorder”);
borderStyle: “inset”;
borderThickness: 1;

…..

<mx:Style source=”myButtonStyle.css” />
<mx:Button label=”My Button” styleName=”myButton”/>

There is an alternate to this approach, which would be to reapply styles with ActionScript code. However, this approach is more compact and has little to no impact on your actual component files. As a best practice for visual Xcelsius components, define your styles in CSS as opposed to inline to prevent the build up of redundant style specifications.

Evan DeLodder is a Senior Software Engineer focused on the development and application of cutting edge Rich Internet Application technologies in the Business Intelligence space. To learn more about him, please visit our new FleXcelsius page.

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My first post, Dear aBI: Dashboarding Must-Haves, was published today! I look forward to your comments!

Mico Yuk is a 2010 SAP Mentor and the founder of the Xcelsius Guru Network and the Everything Xcelsius blog. To learn more about her, please visit our About Us page.

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As the marketing and PR battle rages on between Apple and Adobe, blanket statements are being tossed around regarding the viability of both HTML5 and Flash technologies as if they’re competitors. So far, this debate has only served as a disservice the community in general as the misinformation train continues to board people in high places who don’t completely understand the technologies and begin to make decisions for their organizations that are driven by the general influence of external, biased companies promoting their own product interests, as opposed to properly assessing project technology needs based on other factors that have more, real world substance.

Many people have voiced their opinions on this topic and it’s certainly not breaking news though we thought it beneficial to speak directly on the future viability of Flash and Flex for enterprise Rich Internet Applications, specifically in the Business Intelligence space.

Flash and HTML have both been and are still going to be around for a long time for one very good reason: They both serve an indispensable purpose on the web and for supporting business applications that run on web based technology. Both of these technologies fill in unique gaps and should be used as complimentary technologies and not as competitors or as “one-or-the-other” choices.

With the new release of HTML5, some of the new and long awaited features included in the specification are: A new caching utility to support offline web applications, video and audio API’s with native video embedding, a drag and drop API, new form controls and validation utilities that don’t require custom coding, new online and offline data caching capabilities and a 2D drawing API for rendering vector graphics and images on the fly, just to name a few.

With much respect to HTML5 and the forward progress it is making with the aforementioned features, in the BI space of developing RIA portals, dashboards and data visualizations, I’m having a really hard time seeing where HTML5 could even come close to Flash or Flex technology, without a herculean effort, as many have suggested. I say this as an engineer who has years of experience in both camps. For the past several years, since the very first Flex Alpha release, I’ve been enthralled with the Flex technology, the API’s, the SDK and how rapidly one can develop a highly interactive and infinitely customizable application to solve even the toughest challenges and fill in the most demanding requirements. I won’t get into a punch-down list or table of comparisons between HTML5 and Flex/Flash for BI because it would be both unfair and irrelevant; rather provide a higher level assessment of these technologies and the value that Flash brings in the enterprise BI space.

When considering what technology to adopt and run with for enterprise BI projects, below are just a few of the fundamental categories that I consider to be compelling factors that set Flash and Flex far ahead of the HTML5 pack. For most developers, these go without saying.

OOP Rapid Development

Flex technology is simply and absolutely indisputably light years beyond what HTML5 can bring to the table in this arena and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Why? Because Flex is a highly adaptable software approach developed on top of a robust and comprehensive ever-expanding tried and tested SDK that leverages the powerful concept of Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript. What does this mean aside from the fundamental benefits gained when comparing a full OOP approach to a scripting language? While HTML5 is getting up to speed and is only scratching the surface of Flash capabilities with its new list of features, Flex and Flash are evolving on a frequent basis with an impressive progress rate and evolutionary leaps of capabilities in each release of the Flex SDK which also happens to have release cycles much faster than releases of HTML (a year or 2 for Flex releases vs. years and years for HTML ). This advantage ultimately means a faster time to market/delivery, lower development costs (because so much is already baked in and easily extensible), much more flexibility and feature-rich applications that can continuously evolve in shorter cycles with much less effort.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

While HTML5 and browsers are constantly taking strides to reduce this gap, cross platform compatibility will remain an uphill issue for HTML5 and its new features for the foreseeable future because there are so many factors that come into play. This is nothing new; it’s the same sort of compatibility issues we’ve always had to deal with when using browser scripting technologies.

Flash has few differences between platforms, most of which are minuscule when compared to those found in HTML applications. Testing and developing for cross-platform compatibility takes a hit on developer productivity, which can have a significant ripple effect. Flash applications in general require exponentially less cross-platform testing, which is a big part of the draw for developers and organizations alike as it saves both time and money.

SDK and API Evolution

I was thoroughly impressed to see that HTML5 has snapped to with native access to a handful of very useful API’s and enjoyed thinking of the new mashup possibilities while browsing the some of the new features in action while taking the IE9 test drive. This is a great step forward for the web and is a direction that will certainly continue to grow.

Flex allows developers to build on a comprehensive SDK which is perfectly suited for BI and enterprise development, complete with a base charting framework, classes for data modeling, and an ever expanding arsenal of highly adaptable frameworks and 3^rd party open source BI technologies.

How fast the HTML5 direction and evolution of its tooling will grow is a good question, but one thing remains certain, and that is that Adobe Flash and Flex products will always be leading the way a good 10 steps ahead and setting the new innovative standards into the future of RIA technology and rich experiences on the web.

The State of Flash Mobile

Flash is alive and thriving in the enterprise and will continue to do so, especially with the imminent release of Flash support for many mobile platforms on the horizon. The mobile platform is another example of where these two technologies can co-exist and add tremendous value to one another. The prospect of having a mobile device with these powerful features combined opens a new world of possibilities and we’re absolutely champing at the bit to get a hold of the Flash releases for Android.

Conclusion:

Flash and HTML will always be a part of the web, serving as complimentary technologies that drive value and ultimately combine forces to provide for an optimal application and user experience. However, they should not be compared or pitted against each other for web dominance arguments, because it’s unfair, inapplicable and way off base. The “versus” argument has no merit when discussing these technologies for enterprise business applications, which is where a large disconnect of understanding around the argument is running rampant. In short, we need to be sure we’re always basing our technology decisions objectively, on technical facts and sound research and not on any particular media hype machine.

Evan DeLodder is a Senior Software Engineer focused on the development and application of cutting edge Rich Internet Application technologies in the Business Intelligence space. To learn more about him, please visit our new FleXcelsius page.

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We wanted to reach out in advance to gather preferences on what you would like to learn and any particular SDK pain points that you would like to have addressed. Please leave comments on this post regarding a preferred agenda and please email me if you’re interested in attending.

Evan DeLodder is a Senior Software Engineer focused on the development and application of cutting edge Rich Internet Application technologies in the Business Intelligence space. To learn more about him, please visit our new FleXcelsius page.

Related Posts

• July 8, 2010 — Custom Component Style Preservation (5)
• May 19, 2010 — The Future of Flash in the BI Space (6)