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Macromedia MX: Building Rich Internet Applications There haven't been too many books to cover RIA's in depth and this one is one of the first. |
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With the release for Flash MX and Macromedia's Studio MX, a new buzzterm developed. 'Rich Internet Applications' or RIA's for short. RIA's are essentially full-featured programs that enable users to go online and in one Macromedia Flash presentation do everything from online video and audio chat to full e-commerce with the ability to book travel packages and purchase clothing while you view them on your body type. There haven't been too many books to cover RIA's in depth and this one is one of the first. While the majority of the book focuses on Flash Remoting, Flash Communications Server and ColdFusion MX, other programs in the Studio MX suite are also covered. However, this is not a graphic design book. You won't learn much about creating killer designs in Freehand or Fireworks. Instead you will learn how to create those killer presentations that will get you and/or your company the job over another studio and then the graphics can come later. I recently saw Robert Reinhardt at the Flash in the Can conference in Toronto in April 2003. His session focused mainly on audio and video in Flash so it should come as no surprise that this is the main focus of this book. In many ways it is like Kevin Towes recent New Riders release on Flash Communications Server MX as audio/video/text chat is one of the main subjects. In this book, Reinhardt and partner Simon Allardice cover various ways to do video chat whether it is one on one chat to creating an Instant Messenger like video app where short bursts of video are used to archive and view various messages in a thread. [an error occurred while processing this directive] In addition to chat, RIA's to create online polls are also presented here with various ways to view results using Flash's charting components are included in the book. Separate chapters on Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flash Remoting, Flash Communications Server and various databases are also included in the book. In addition the book's companion website offers PDF's that show how to develop RIA's on a Macintosh, Planning various types of environments and also how to effectively debug RIA's. These PDF's are free for all who visit the site. Flash Communications Server is still getting mixed reviews by many in the Flash community and I've been in FlashComm video/text chat rooms that have crashed on me minutes after logging in. However, with version 1.5 of FlashComm now released and Macromedia doing the smart thing by offering the personal version of FlashComm for free (!) along with Flash Remoting now being supported by PHP for the first time, we can only hope these new tools get a drastic increase in its' user base and that the products continue to improve so we can all continue to create RIA's using just one app instead of a million different plugins. It will be books like this that will hopefully blaze the trail to the initial inceptions of these unique applications. That or we could just all go back to tooning........which was how we all were using Flash in the first place! Adam Bell is the Design Director, CEO, Videographer and sometimes janitor with dzign@datatv.com (http://datatv.com/) amazingly not getting plastered in the French Quarter of New Orleans, LA. Source: DMO 
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