Aptana with AIR support

I decided to upgrade to version 3.3 of Eclipse today. I went for a clean install, and then add the plugins I use. So after installing CFEclipse first (of course), I went on over to the Aptana website to get the Aptana plugin (which I mainly use for CSS), and there on the front page they announce that Aptana now supports AIR.

I've not checked it out my self yet. Actually I took the time to write this post even before downloading the Aptana plugin. So go check it out your self at: http://www.aptana.org/air/.

Apollo and Ajax/Spry (XMLHttpRequest) possible?

I decided to use any spare time during the easter holiday to learn some Apollo and Ajax (Spry) development, with the intent of combining these two technologies to make a foundation for a new and powerful UI model for web applications.

Now I did not get as much time to look at it as I hoped, but even so I already have come to a roadblock.

The following code works wonders when called from a page under the ulseth.no domain:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/xpath.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/SpryData.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
var dsPhotos = new Spry.Data.XMLDataSet("http://ulseth.no/spry1/photos.xml", "/gallery/photos/photo");
</script>

<ul spry:region="dsPhotos">
<li spry:repeat="dsPhotos">{dsPhotos::@path}</li>
</ul>

But when run from my local machine it generates an error:

Exception caught while loading http://ulseth.no/spry1/photos.xml: Permission denied to call method XMLHttpRequest.open

Any suggestions as to how I should/could move on would be highly appreciated.

Not getting Apollo SDK to work (can someone help?)

In my "Environmental Variables" the "Classpath" variable now looks like this:

.;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\QTJava.zip;C:\Program Files\Adobe\ApolloSDK\lib\adt.jar;C:\Program Files\Adobe\ApolloSDK\bin\

I added the direct path to the adt.jar file as described on Adobe Labs, and then I added the path to the bin folder as well (kinda to be sure).

Then my "Path" variable now looks like this:

%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Adobe\AdobeSDK\bin\

I added the path to the bin folder as described by Ryan Taylor.

Whenever I now try to test my project I get the error message:

'adl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

and similary I get an error trying to package the project:

'adt' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Installing Apollo SDK

I decided to try to accomplish two things during my Easter holiday. One is to finish version 0.5 of newBee, and one is to get started with Apollo and Spry.

So this morning I headed over to Adobe Labs to get going.

I'm not using Flex (yet) so I wanted to install the SDK for making HTML based applications. The installation instructions on the lab is as follows.

  • Download SDK
  • Extract files to directory on your computer (I used C:\Program Files\Adobe\ApolloSDK\)
  • Add path to the \bin folder to your path environment variable

The first two points was easy. Then came point 3. For the more computer savvy this might be obvious, but for me it was not, and I started searching around the lab for information on what exactly they mean by this. No luck. Then over to Google, and luckily Ryan Tyler has blogged some better information. What I'm doing here is pretty much repeating parts from his post (in my own words), and with the additional screen shots.

First you want to right click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties":

The click the "Advanced" tab:

Then click the "Environment Variables" button close to the bottom:

Then in the "System variables" list find and mark the variable "Path" and click the "Edit" button:

At the end of the "Variable value" add a semi-colon at the end of the path followed by the location you extracted the SDK and add "\bin\" at the end of that:

That should be it. Now I'll get out of bed and have some breakfast, and then I'll see if I can get further in creating my first Apollo application.

EDIT: I now found that there is instructions on the lab site to be found here. That this information is not linked up from the instalation instructions is still a mystery to me though.