Progressing beyond the Desktop at Universities with Adobe AIR

Progressing beyond the Desktop at Universities

with Adobe AIR Joseph Labrecque | Senior Multimedia Application Developer

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

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]

Before we get into all this “beyond” the desktop stuff…

Let’s establish some background.

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

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

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

Flash Player

Adobe AIR

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

Let’s talk about CourseMedia for a bit.

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…

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

DU CourseMedia™ - Demonstration

That’s all very nice… but…

What about going beyond the desktop?

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.

Hardware Integration

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.

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;

CourseMedia™ Projection System – Room Layout

Screen 1 Screen 2 Console

Projector 1 Projector 2

CourseMedia™ Projection System - Demonstration

CourseMedia™ Projection System – Code Example

OS Native Process Integration

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.

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);

DropFolders - Demonstration

DropFolders – Code Example

Mobile Devices!

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.

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler - Demonstration

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler – Code Example

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.

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler “Hero” - Demonstration

CourseMedia™ StudyShuffler “Hero” - Code Example

What next?

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.

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.

Closing

Blog: http://inflagrantedelicto.memoryspiral.com/

Twitter: @JosephLabrecque

Email: Joseph.Labrecque@du.edu

Thank you…

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Progressing beyond the Desktop at Universities with Adobe AIR

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