Raymond Camden's Blog Rss

Apollo isn't just Flash/Flex

3

Posted in | Posted on 03-23-2007 | 3,296 views

Want to play with Apollo but don't want to use/learn Flash or Flex? Check out the demo, Fresh on the Apollo samples page. This thing is amazing. It is a 100% HTML/JS/AJAX Apollo application with not a lick of Flash in it. A very good example of what can be done with the platform. I must find more time to play with Apollo.

One thing I was curious about was how HTML apps in Apollo get access to all the nice things the framework gives us - like file system access. Turns out you can access the API via JavaScript like it was part of the browser itself. As an example (and I'm ripping this right from the pocket guide), this is how you can play an MP3:

view plain print about
1urlReq = new runtime.flash.net.URLRequest("test.mp3");
2sound = new runtime.flash.media.Sound(urlReq);
3sound.play();

I think next week I'll whip up a pure HTML demo. I've been thinking of building an application just to interface with CFLib.

Download attached file

Comments

[Add Comment] [Subscribe to Comments]

DK said on 03-23-2007 at 2:35 PM #
pretty cool example. My only qualm is my scroll wheel isn't working in any of the examples I've downloaded so far =\
Rick Root said on 03-23-2007 at 10:27 PM #
Pretty sweet Ray! Thanks for posting this. I just finished updating Flex Builder, installing Apollo and all that stuff here ath ome, and decided before I went to bed (now that the basketball games are over for the night).. I thought I'd check Google Reader to see if anything interesting had been blogged since last time.

Lo and behold, now I have another way to aggregate you and ben forta's blogs =)

Pretty amazing that it's all HTML and AJAX!
Joshua Curtiss said on 03-23-2007 at 11:03 PM #
I was relieved when I saw this during some of the Apollo presentations. That's great. Nice to know I don't <em>have</em> to learn yet another language to do fun Apollo stuff. It appears, too, that they don't want to make developers taking the AJAX approach to feel like lesser citizens by having decreased support for the HTML/JavaScript approach, but I fear this may happen. For instance, how will I have offline support for an Apollo app that uses AJAX for its data connectivity?