Last week, at work, I was creating an Zend_AMF server for some project I work on. But because the front-end isn’t ready yet, I couldn’t test the server properly.

UnitTests are one thing, but I wanted to be 100% sure that everything is mapped correctly.

I was thinking of creating a browser like the one you find in amfphp or weborb, but I didn’t had the time.
Next option: search and find a browser with Google.

A few moments ago, I found ZamfBrowser. It’s an Air application, so perfect for every developer, whether you work with OSX, *nix or even Windows.

Features I like already:
- auto updates
- you can add amf servers as many as you want
- you can build your own request, with as many parameters as you like

Tomorrow I’ll test it properly, and I’ll post my findings later this week.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, October 14th) there will be a special Apple event. We all know Steve Jobs will announce new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. 

Today I’ve seen a very interesting mockup (I suppose) on Engadget combining a dock for the iPhone and a notebook. The iPhone is the brain and the touchpad.
I think this can be a very useful device for developers for instance: You create a (web)app or website, let it run on your iPhone (I should check if there’s already a webserver ported to the iPhone, or maybe there’s one build-in), with the keyboard it’s easy to develop on the road (let’s say on a train, plane or bus) and it’s easy to show your work when you’re visiting your client. The best of all: you don’t have to carry a large and/or heavy laptop.

Maybe, just maybe, Apple made such a device, or will make one one day.

Google Chrome is really nice! I’ve been testing it for only a few moments on my MacBook, using Windows XP running in a VM.

It’s super fast.

Launching the app takes about 0.5 seconds, and you can start surfing right away.

The Speed Dial function on the first page wasn’t working yet, there was a message that I should use Chrome a while longer before any sites would show up. Just gimme some time, Google :)

Browsing the web is pretty fast, of course, every depends on your connection. I had to reinstall the Flash player, and I loved it: multiple tabs were open, one tab was requesting to install the Flash player, which I did, and after installing the Flash player, only that tab reloaded and everything worked. No more “restart the browser” messages. I really love it!

Message to Google: bring us asap a Mac and Linux version, please!

Big news! Google will release it’s very own, created from scratch, webbrowser very soon!

It’s called Chrome, and I think it’s very promissing: multi-threaded, multi processes per tab, each tab in a sandbox … More details can be found in the comic.

Unfortunatly, it will be launched Windows only. Mac and Linux will be released a bit later.

Something to watch closely!

This morning, I’ve lost some hours searching for a way to create an AIR app straight from ActionScript with Adobe FlexBuilder 3.

When you create a new Flex app, you can chose between a normal Flex app and an AIR app. With a new ActionScript project, you can’t.

You can create an AIR app from a standard .swf, but then you can’t use the native AIR framework.

Now, here’s a solution:

You create a new Flex project with AIR export in the Flex Builder.

In your favorite text-editor (e.g. TextWrangler) you open hidden .actionScriptProperties file, located in the root of your project folder.

You change the <application path=”<sourcefile>.mxml”/> into <application path=”<sourcefile>.as”/>. Make sure you have created the .as file

Now create a new NativeWindow in the constructor of the ActionScript class and …

now build your app.

You’ve just created an AIR app, based on an ActionScript class.

Source:

I just wandered through the Google Labs, and I’ve discovered a new toy. Apparently it exists already since 2006, but I’ve never seen it before.

We all know Google Earth, but now, there’s also Google Mars. You can look at the surface of Mars in three different views: elevation, visible and infrared. 

Have fun!