Andrew Shorten

Morgan Stanley have launched a comprehensive online trading tool called “Matrix” which allows their customers to get closer to the trading floor than ever before; the application enables them to view live pricing, get informed opinions for market professionals, review historical market data and make derivatives and foreign exchange trades in real-time, directly from their browser.

This impressive rich Internet application (RIA), which has a strong focus on the quality of the user experience, was built using Adobe’s Flash Platform technologies, and integrates real-time data, with the delivery of audio, video, reports and rich interactive charts to provide a next-generation trading platform for Morgan Stanley’s customers.

The sheer quantity of data presented within the application, combined with the performance and responsiveness of the user interface, is impressive and really demonstrates the potential that rich Internet applications offer. This certainly has to be one of the most ambitious and successfully executed applications built using Flex and raises the bar as to what can be achieved within the browser.

For more information on the project and a virtual walkthrough of the application visit Morgan Stanley’s website: http://www.morganstanley.com/matrixinfo/

More pictures below:

Last Friday I delivered a pre-launch briefing to UK journalists on today’s announcements around new Flash Platform tooling, specifically the beta release of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. In addition, we invited web design and development agency howard/baines to talk about their experiences using the pre-beta version of the tools to create a rich Internet application. Both these sessions were recorded, so I thought I’d post them here.

The first video provides a high level overview of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder, followed by a demonstration of building the Employee Directory application - this might be useful if you’re looking to get up to speed on the announcements and want to see the designer/developer workflow between the tools in action:

In the second video, Clive Howard and Jeremy Baines talk about the communication challenges normally faced when working on a project and how, using Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder, they were able to rapidly prototype and build a rich Internet application deployed to Flash Player.

Tags: Adobe, builder, catalyst, flash, RIA

As part of my learning process with the beta releases of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder I created a simple version of the Employee Directory application that we use inside Adobe to find information about employees.

I’ve written up the process of building this application and it’s now available on the Adobe Developer Connection site as a tutorial. If you’re interested in walking through the process of importing a design into Flash Catalyst, converting graphics to components, creating states and transitions, adding interactivity and then moving to Flash Builder, to connect to a ColdFusion or PHP back-end to retrieve and display data using the new DCD (Data Centric Development) features then I’d recommend it to you.

This is the application that you will build by following the tutorial:

You can access the tutorial and download the sample files here.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for future tutorials then please let me know.

Tags: Adobe, builder, catalyst, ColdFusion, DCD, flash, Flex, labs, php, tutorial

Today, we announced that the first public beta releases of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder (previously known as Flex Builder) are available on Adobe Labs.

“Design in Mind” was one of the core themes for this release, and these tools, together with the updated Flex 4 SDK, deliver on that to make it easier than ever create high fidelity, rich Internet applications that target the Flash Platform.

We’ve published a lot of information to help you get started with these beta releases and hope that you’ll have an opportunity to give us your feedback in the forums, so that the final releases of Flash Builder and Flex 4 SDK, due later this year, are ready for prime time.

For information on what’s new, check out the following articles:

• What’s new in the Flex 4 SDK
• What’s new in Flash Bulder 4
• Getting started with Flash Catalyst

For more articles, tutorials and videos head to the Adobe Developer Connection site.

Tags: beta, builder, catalyst, flash, RIA

The organisers of Scotch on the Rocks are taking the annual conference on tour next week, setting up in London on Monday (1st), Manchester on Wednesday (3rd) and ending up in Edinburgh on Friday (5th).

There is lots happening in relation to the Flash Platform this year - new releases of the Flex framework, Flash Builder and ColdFusion and completely new tools in the shape of Bolt (the code-name for the new ColdFusion IDE) and Flash Catalyst.

Scotch on the Rocks is going to be THE place to be next week if you want the latest news on all these releases… Terry Ryan, Adam Lehman and Serge Jespers will be at each of the events from Adobe, together with a host of additional speakers including Mike Jones, Peter Elst and Tom Chiverton.

Registration is still open, and it only costs £49 + VAT to attend one of these events - with the current economic climate, the organisers even created a “Manager’s information pack” that you can pass along to your manager to help get approval for a day out of the office
What are you waiting for? Register now…