Last night I got side tracked and figured out how to call methods and recieve results on a .NET dll from inside my Ruby on Rails website.

What the F*$k you say. .NET and ROR, what an unlikely couple. Well yeah. ROR rocks at making sites quick and clean. .NET is the most rocking serverside lanuage with system intergration. It should be its writen by the same company that makes the OS. So I was after a way to get the best of both worlds.

I really wont bore you with the details here, but if you want any info just leave a comment with your email and I will explain it to you. I would like to write a generic wrapper/plugin for ROR to make this really easy but I have to sort out translation of dataTypes so complex Objects can be passed between the two.

I wrote a little site that called a .NET dll to get system information like CPU % etc to display on a page. To basically show load on the server. 

Ultra g33k stuff I know but still a very cool little tid bit to know can be done. 

The boys at WebOrb have been very busy working away on getting Remoting for flex in .NET very solid. Today they release the Release candidate 1, Which means its almost 100%. So now its probably time to download the RC1 and have a play. I love open API's like webservices and rpc calls for open API's on commercail services but you really cant beat the small packet size of binary remoting. One of the new features in WebOrb 3.0 is intergrated security, which isnt enabled on the RC but will be soon.

Not to mention all the hard work in the back end but check out the front end. They have build a management console in flex of course, which is a central place for documentation and code generation. THATS RIGHT CODE GENERATION!!!

And not just one lanuage. Remember that WebOrb can cover many network protocols including Ajax.

 As well as this there is a central place to view examples:

So even if you just want to know what its al about try downloading and install it (its very easy) and take a look. There are many many more feature included with this new release but too many to talk about in one post. I believe Mark Pillar will be doing some demo videos and tutorials soon.

Yep you heard right, Free! Well restricted in the free versions but not much. With the release of Flex 2 came the need for AMF3 compatable solutions. Recently I have been hunting round for one that allowed me to use Ruby on rails along with AMF. There are a few opensource options underway but by the looks of it the guys at WebOrb are well underway. They alreay have versions in .NET and Java so its safe to say they know what they are doing. I got a comment posted one of my other blog entries and I really cant believe I hadnt heard of this sooner. I realise these guys used to be FlashOrb but its all new and shinny.

"Free open-source implementation of Flash Remoting in Ruby."
"Can be deployed into any Rails-enabled application to expose it to Flash Remoting and Flex clients."
"Provides full implementation of Flash Remoting and Flex Data Services (AMF0 and AMF3, Data Management)"

If you head over to http://www.themidnightcoders.com/index.htm  and check it out, they say that the PHP and the ROR version is coming Q3 06 (never really liked that whole quarter thing but I spose it means there isnt a solid date). I cant wait though, seeing how easy and fast ROR is along with AMF and some flex (my goodness I sound like a marketing person lol) I will be making some cool stuff…..quickly.

Best of all the same packages that provide the AMF are specifically designed to intergrate with AJAX calls. So you get the best of all the Web 2.0 terms to sell your client on buying the full version. The have plenty of demoslive on their server. Showing that pretty much the same methods can be accessed via both AMF and ajax calls.

So put this one in your "to keep an eye on" box and hold your breath. 

Yep I have an alpha of the FlabThrotle running now. Its a socket server which will just replicate localhost traffic to a new port but the requests will be "throtled" or slowed to simulate 56kbps modems etc. I know there are other versions of programs out there that do similar things but no simple ones. Once I have a few more bugs ironed out and a few more features finished (like a balloon poping up with the localhost url for an easy click) I will publiclly release the Beta. See the screen shot below; It shows the little settings dialouge and an image loaded on the throtled port. Its nothing flash but just a cool tool for testing flash movies. I wanted to keep it simple and sweet!

For those of you keeping an eye on this blog for Flabulator , my flash widget app, yes I am still working on it, but I got quite frustrated with the alpha issue in .Net. Seems I can only really do it in c++ or a linked c++ dll. Not Fun!! Everything works except alpha channels and I havent gotten round to making the external interface library. The library is this weeks task! Anyone really hanging for this application?

So peeps things will keep on keeping on here check back soon!

Alpha transparency of the flash OCX control has been nothing short of a pain in the a$$. So I downloaded the opensource Screenweaver to see how they were doing it. The original authors seem to be first drawing a bitmap to memory of the flash control with a white background, then a black background, comparing the two offsets( obviously if the colour of a pixel didnt change it has no alpha and you just have to work out the varying amount for those that did change). This seems like a really good way of doing it. Kinda smart really.

So I will first off try to reproduce this as a class in .Net and if not I will try hooking into the screenweaver DLL. But this just goes to show how openSource rocks!! Same as always If I get it done Ill release the source of the class. Stay tuned!!