This is David's follow-up to his AIR Essential Training course, and takes a deeper look at how Flex Builder 3 and the Flex 3 framework can be used to build cross-system desktop applications with Adobe AIR. David examines every point of integration with the host operating system, including working with the local file system, creating and maintaining local databases, and managing native windows and menus.

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Related Links:

• Flex titles
  
• AIR titles
  

"For the first time, companies will be able to leverage the appeal of newer technologies for users, improve the existing content applications already in use, and power all of these with a more scalable and secure platform than ever before available."

It's currently available as a free online beta which empowers knowledge workers to collaborate using shared work spaces.

Media WorkSpace

A new interface to work with media assets, the Media Workspace is an extension of the Documentum Digital Asset Manager. Built on Adobe Flex technology, it includes such features as:

• Thumbnail display with zooming
  
• Collections and comparison sets
  
• Image Annotations and Notes
  
• Relevance Ranking
  
• Search
  
• Metadata access, and more
  

A Flex-based authoring interface, the Web Publisher Page Builder is designed for the non-technical users providing a number of tools to create web experiences.

Web Publisher Page Builder

It is essentially a WYSIWYG editor for website creation and content contribution. Features include:

• Ability to create component-based websites
  
• Drag and drop and rich media assets
  
• Site preview and editing
  
• Thumbnail and template browsing
  
• XML management and support
  

Features in this component include:

• Process - content unification
  
• Configurable and reusable components
  
• Role-based applications
  
• Interactive forms
  
• Task Completion
  
• Process Dashboard
  

Other Tidbits

• Data is now stored in XML in a native XML database.
  
• High volume service
  
• Integrates the AVALONidm product - a digital asset mgmt system.
  
• Record management
  
• Transactional business process - build forms and use dashboards to monitor activity.

No one is surprised when they go to the California DMV to see employees using ASCII/ANSI/DOS/VT100 terminal screens; it's the gov't right? Those guys are old school!

But I was quite surprised to see how DOS screens are still incredibly prolific in this day and age. United Airlines, Hertz car rental, the Canadian passport office, Future Shop, etc... all using text only screens. Even back at home prior to the trip I noticed Lexus and BMW dealerships are also using text screens for their service departments.

There's a laundry list of limitations with such a UI, so their longevity is amazing. So the question is why? One reason could be if it's not broken, why fix it? Doing total s/w rewrites is enormously expensive, time consuming, and risky - which thus makes it even more difficult to actualize any ROI. There's also opportunity cost: what else could you have done with that money to improve profits?

A second reason could be that from a data entry perspective it's incredibly fast (at the cost of user friendliness). The limitations actually force the developers to streamline the process to the max. And because of that, have we traded in this speed for the sake of cool looking super advanced UIs that are supposedly more user friendly?

Although emotionally users like the coolness factor which does yield a qualitative value, it's the bottom line productivity of the user is that will benefit the business the most. So when designing a new UI it may be an interesting exercise to at least consider how it would compare against a text only screen from a raw process/efficiency perspective as you try to strike a balance (that you define) that's best for your business between friendliness and raw speed.