Albertx blog

If you use to create Flex Apps I’m almost sure you profile your applications with Flex Builder or with another tool related to. This time I’ll talk about profiling applications.
Profiling an application means to inspect the elements that your application is running, how much memory you application is consuming, how many instances of each class your application is executing and more information. You can compare memory snapshots of the same application but in different execution time, etc.
You can profile with Flex Builder any application generated as swf file, this includes Flex Applications, Flash Applications/Web sites/animations and any swf created with any tool that has the capability to export the project as swf file.
Before you profile an application you must ensure that the swf file has been compiled with debugging capabilities. Flex does this job for you every time you run, debug or profile your application from Flex Builder, but in Flash this doesn’t happen. You must explicitly tell Flash that your swf must be compiled for debugging. You can do this from the publish settings panel. In the flash tab you have a checkbox unselected by default which says “Permit debugging” and you must turn it on.

When you turn on this option your application will be compiled with the compiler argument “debug=true”. (You can also compile your application directly with that compile argument if you have a Flash Compiler). The compiler will embed to the swf file information needed for debugging the application, also it will try to connect the application by socket to a socket server when it starts. Flex Builder starts up that socket server when you profile or debug a swf file from Flex Builder with the green buttons in the toolbar, so, as you can imagine, you should first start up the server and then execute the swf file.
From Flex builder you have to profile an external application. You will find this option in the Menu bar – Profile – Profile External Application. This will launch a pop up window that will ask you for the swf file of the application you want to profile. You also have the option to just prepare Flex Builder for profiling and let it wait for the application to execute and connect to Flex Builder (for this you have to choose “Launch the application manually outside Flex Builder”). I will emphasize the first option which profiles directly the selected application. In this window you can browse for the swf file compiled previously in Flash or Flex with the debug option and then you just launch the profiling process and that’s all.


Don’t forget to turn off the “Permit debug” option from Flash or clear the “debug” compile argument in production mode because someone could debug you application remotely from his computer.
Enjoy it.

Today Edgar Parada and I gave a tutorial about developing RIAs with Adobe Flex at Software Guru ’08 Conference and Expo. If you haven’t heard about SG Conference and Expo, it is an yearly event in Mexico dedicate to IT.
Last year we participated in this event as Speakers where we presented the Flex technology to people focused on Internet applications. This time it was a little different. We gave a tutorial where students learned to create a RIA with Flex Builder, they understood how flash player and flex works and how RIAs can take their work to the next level in the Internet Applications. It was an 8 hours class with around 30 students, mainly developers and some designers.
Their skills were good, really good (that’s one of the things I love), asking some questions about the integration with other CS3 products in the designers side, other questions about integration with BI technologies in the developers side and others about exchanging data with server techs like Java, Ruby and .NET, etc.
Finally we showed some examples including Adobe apps like acrobat.com (Buzzword, Share, ConnectNow), Flex Style Explorer, the famous Flex Store and some in-house applications.
Tomorrow the conferences will start and they have good speakers this time focused on Project Management. I’ve been invited and I’ll post a review about them later.
Regards.

Today Adobe launched a new version of Flex Builder for Linux. This time is Alpha 3 and the main new feature is that you can build projects for Adobe AIR.And why is that ? because today was also launched an alpha version of AIR for Linux.

Both releases are on Adobe Labs and also you can find there other new releases like Photoshop Express and Kuler 2.0.Regards.