When I recently updated an Adobe AIR app I’d written for AIR Beta 1, I found that I had to go to enormous lengths to continue being able to use ExtJs as a selection & effects library for it. This is due to “eval()” being prohibited in the base Javascript on any AIR app.
I also tried jQuery, but that didn’t work either. Calls to “eval()” are just too integral to both frameworks. Enough so that I couldn’t even do basic CSS selectors.
MooTools Works with AIR
While walking the dogs this morning, I had a minor eureka moment, and decided to try Mootools in an AIR app. I spent a half hour tinkering around in Aptana, downloading MooTools 1.1, and setting up a few tests. The result is extremely pleasing. Not only is MooTools way better and easier to use than I remember, but it works out of the box with AIR, without the cumbersome bridge process. I can do CSS selectors (at least basic ones, I haven’t tested heavily yet) and I can even use transition effects.
This is very pleasing to me. I’m liking AIR quite a bit for fun little programs, and I’ve been writing down ideas for other small little useful programs, but having to split all of them into bridged components just to get access to a decent effect library was simply too much.
Technorati Tags: mootools, jQuery, ExtJS, AIR, adobe-air
6 responses so far ↓
1 kramer // Oct 30, 2007 at 10:50 am
Thanks for the tip, i was previously using an autocomplete with jquery and once beta 2 came out it killed it. Even when i followed the security settings it had a problem because the autocomplete used an iframe (which was already inside one for security). With the switch to mootools it’s working great.
2 Rey Bango // Oct 30, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Hey Bruce. Sorry you’re having issues. Ext and Adobe have a great relationship and we’re (Ext) addressing these issues with them.
3 napyfab:blog» Blog Archive » links for 2007-10-31 // Oct 31, 2007 at 3:32 pm
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6 Jonah Dempcy // Apr 23, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Haven’t experimented with AIR yet but I am curious to try it out. As for libraries, I have 1 year production experience using Prototype/Scriptaculous and while it made some things easier, also had a fair amount of cumbersome boilerplate code, annoying quirks and peculiarities with the OO inheritance. I’ve heard that much of this has been fixed in newer versions (I was using 1.5) but this experience led me to investigate alternative solutions, eventually choosing MooTools and using that for a number of projects. It’s great to hear that MooTools works out-of-the-box with AIR. It’s a very clean, well-thought-out library so I can’t say that surprises me.
I can’t speak for Ext or the others as I don’t have much experience with them. I’ve used a bit of jQuery and it has a very succinct syntax that I like, but in terms of reading the actual source code, MooTools is the only library where I have truly delved into the implementation details and actually been able to get a good grasp of what’s going on.
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