Progressing beyond the Desktop at Universities with Adobe AIR

Introduction Joseph Labrecque  Flash Platform Developer  Multidisciplinary Digital Artist  Adobe Education Leader  University of Denver  Senior Multimedia Application Developer  Center for Teaching and Learning  Fractured Vision Media, LLC © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 2

Topics Covered University of Denver and the Flash Platform CourseMedia™: Course Media Management System Adobe AIR – Taking Things Beyond the Traditional Desktop  Integration with Projection Hardware  Access Native OS Processes  Mobile: Adobe AIR for Android Project Examples  DropFolders  CourseMedia™ Projection System  CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler [Flash Professional]  CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler [Mobile Flex] © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 3

University of Denver – Center for Teaching and Learning The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offers a variety of faculty development opportunities including workshops and seminars, grant funding for faculty- initiated projects, and support and development of technological applications that advance teaching and learning goals. Two Units:  Teaching and Learning Support  Grants and Teaching Support  Application and Services Support  Research and Development  Application Development (ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, AIR, Java, PHP)  Technology Advisement and Forecasting © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 5

Flash Platform Overview  Client Runtimes  Flash Player for both desktop and mobile  Adobe AIR for desktop and mobile  Servers and Services  Flash Media Server  LiveCycle / Blaze DS  Flash Platform Services  Tools and Frameworks  Flash Builder  Flash Professional  Flash Catalyst  Flex Framework  Open Source Media Framework © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 6

University of Denver – Use of the Flash Platform We use a LOT of Flash and Adobe technologies in our custom-built applications!  Flash Media Interactive Server  ColdFusion Enterprise  Flash Professional CS5  Flash Catalyst CS5  Flash Builder 4  Flex Framework  OSMF  Flash Player  Adobe AIR © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 7

University of Denver – Some Major Initiatives ALORA: Active Learning Object Repository Application  Backend media catalog  Image, video, and audio files  Public and private records  Flash GUI management interface (AS2!)  Many possible meta-schemas CourseMedia™: Course Media Management System  Taps into ALORA and includes additional database of media  Local/personal media: embedded video, text slides, uploaded images  Variety of presentation mechanisms  Full user-managed toolset © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 8

DU CourseMedia™ - Course Media Management System  Web-based video clip generator  Per-object narrative recorder  Embed code generator for Blackboard  Integrated media viewer  Content can be copyright- protected or public  Content providers can generate embed codes for external, public videos  Bunch of other tools… © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 10

DU CourseMedia™ - How it Leverages the Flash Platform  Media streamed (audio/video) and verified (images) through Flash Media Server  Online video clip editor – Flash  Integrated media viewer with complete teaching and learning toolset – Flex  Gallery Arrangement Tool - Flex  Projection system integration - AIR  AIR interaction points across campus  AIR for Android mobile study app © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 11

Beyond the Traditional Desktop So what do we mean by this phrase?  Doing things with AIR that either traditionally were not possible in Flash Player or similar technologies.  Tapping into the hardware of hosted systems.  The ability to address native code on these systems.  Expanding from desktop application installs to mobile and devices. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 14

CourseMedia™ Projection System  Used by faculty to present CourseMedia™ objects (Image, Video, Audio, Text Slides, YouTube, et cetera) via an instructor station through attached system projectors.  Intelligently discovers how many additional screens exist and at what size to render a control panel and presentation window for each one.  One additional screen allows the extra option to have a split view in order to still present comparisons.  Rooms equipped with up to 3 projectors at DU. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 16

CourseMedia™ Projection System - Hardware Access “Screens are independent desktop areas within a possibly larger "virtual desktop." The origin of the virtual desktop is the top-left corner of the operating-system-designated main screen. Thus, the coordinates for the bounds of an individual display screen may be negative. There may also be areas of the virtual desktop that are not within any of the display screens.” One of the great advantages of AIR over traditional Flash applications is that you have this tight relationship with the OS and system hardware. import flash.display.Screen; protected var screenArray:Array = new Array(); … screenArray = Screen.screens; © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 17

DropFolders  Adobe AIR 2.0 application to allow HandBrake CLI to monitor watch and destination folders.  Includes the ability to define and manage custom presets.  Hands-free batch video encoding for non-video people!  Created for faculty use.  Can be installed on a server. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 22

DropFolders - NativeProcess Access “The NativeProcess class provides command line integration and general launching capabilities. The NativeProcess class lets an AIR application execute native processes on the host operating system. The AIR applcation can monitor the standard input (stdin) and standard output (stdout) stream of the process as well as the process's standard error (stderr) stream.” Basically, this new API allows your application to communicate with just about any process running on the host machine. This can be an operating system core process or a third party installed application like HandBrake. import flash.desktop.NativeProcess; import flash.desktop.NativeProcessStartupInfo; … nativeProcess.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo); © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 23

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler Mobile is going to be HUGE in education.  Mobile study aid for art history students.  Adobe AIR 2.5 for Android.  Draws gallery and image information from CourseMedia servers based on user login.  Image slides are displayed at random.  Tap the image to view metadata.  Shake to grab a new image.  Makes use of the Accelerometer to detect a shake. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 27

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler “Hero” - AIR for Android What are the differences when working with Flash Professional vs. Flash Builder 4.5 and the “Hero” Flex SDK?  Much of the orientation and layout structure is provided by Flex.  Many of the components are optimized for mobile.  New “View” structures for working on mobile. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 30

Future Possibilities So, what are some future possibilities for university tools that go beyond the desktop? Generally the same for any tool implementing the Flash Platform. Flash Player  Take advantage of new capabilities as we move ahead with new versions of the player. AIR  With each version of AIR that is released, we see more options for integrating more closely with other systems and environments. Mobile  Expanded use of Mobile as a study aid.  As devices become more powerful, we’ll be able to do more and more with the tools we develop. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 34

Closing Blog: http://inflagrantedelicto.memoryspiral.com/ Twitter: @JosephLabrecque Email: Joseph.Labrecque@du.edu Thank you… © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 36

Turn in your Surveys for a chance to WIN!  Hand in your surveys to the room monitors  One survey will be selected as a winner of the Adobe Press e-book Adobe Flash Platform from Start to Finish: Working Collaboratively Using Adobe Creative Suite 5  Winners will be notified via e-mail at the end of each day © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 37

Progressing beyond the Desktop at Universities with Adobe AIR

by Joseph Labrecque

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