The solution Brian outlines requires JavaScript because the only XSL toolkit AIR provides is inside of the WebKit HTML rendering engine. Consequently, AIR developers working with the Flash or Flex APIs will need to use an ActionScript-JavaScript bridge. Brian provides a nice code snippet showing how to create that bridge. Great, but still a kludge.

Unfortunately, XSL doesn’t seem to have made it into the Gumbo API for the next version of Flex and AIR. There is also no mention of XSL in Mike Chambers’ September post about AIR 1.5. I have not had an opportunity to pull down a recent nightly build of the Flex trunk to verify that the ActionScript API for AIR continues to lack XSL support, but all indications are that XSL is not present.

A little bit of Googling indicates that I am not alone in desiring XSL capabilities in AIR that do not require a bridge to JavaScript. I know that XSL is not like the hot stuff that Adobe like to tout in its products (OLAP only made it in because of its use in visualization), but it’s a real asset for enterprise developers.

I suspect that Adobe’s plan may be to leave out XSL—and a lot of other large-but-niche APIs—and let teams needing those capabilities include them with FlaCC, the upcoming C/C++ to Flash byte code compiler. (More info about FlaCC, including links to slides and a hi-res presentation video is available here). Specifically, for XSL, Xalan and Xerces could be imported. In truth, I find this to be an attractive solution, in part because I’m sure someone else will go through the hassle of compiling the popular C/C++ libraries to SWCs for me—I will only need drop those into my project.

However, if you are an AIR developer who cannot wait for FlaCC or want to see XSL make it into AIR’s officialy ActionScript API, consider submitting an enhancement request.

The same principle holds true for other Web applications, whether the garnish is Ajax, Flash, Flex, Silverlight, or—like this blog—good old fashioned dynamically generated HTML. It is the data that must be indexed, the presentation around that data is (conceptually) irrelevant for SEO purposes. I think the matter may be confused because for so long the data and the presentation were bundled together in HTML (like this blog). Now with Ajax and Flash/Flex, we are back to separating the user interface from the data. However, when the data isn’t part of the user interface document sent by the server, it’s harder for search engines to access and index.

So what’s the solution? Expose the data for indexing and detect when incoming links should launch the Flash/Flex app instead of responding with the raw information. Naturally, the Flash/Flex app would be launched to deep-linked directly to the relevant content. If you’re not sure how to make the data indexable, I’ll tell you that I take my guidance from RESTful Web Services. The magic in this solution is detecting when an incoming link should launch a deep-linked Flex application and when it should render the raw data. For the moment, I’ll punt on detailing an implementation—consider it to be an exercise for the reader.

An exercise for the reader that can lead to rich rewards! Ryan Stewart has announced the Flex SEO Contest to encourage the community to establish best practices for Flash/Flex indexing. The rules are straightforward and the top prize is CS4 Master Collection. I like the challenge and may try my hand creating an entry that meets the contest criteria just for the experience of it.

The “raw text and images” approach is fine for shorter content—blogs, newspaper articles, and the like—but I’ve found that for longer content, real attention to typography and page layout is needed to make the experience enjoyable for me. (This is also why the current implementation of O’Reilly’s Safari service doesn’t work for me.) However, it never occurred to me that PDFs could be made specially for the ebook reader screen—complete with appropriately sized text and all of the traditional design touches normally reserved for print. Now I’ve learned that Rosenfeld Media’s PDF edition of Indi Young’s book Mental Models is designed to be read on the 4×6 screen found on many popular ebook readers. From the screenshot provided in Jorge Arango’s article, I have to admit: that looks like an ebook I would be happy to curl up with for hours.

In hindsight, it’s really obvious that publishers could design PDF ebooks specifically for consumption on ebook readers. In fact, it’s so obvious that I believe PDF books designed primarily for viewing on an ebook reader is the future of digital publishing¹. It certainly is a prerequisite for me to embrace reading books on a digital device.

¹ The technical implementation doesn’t have to be PDF. Any format that tightly defines the typography and layout of pages will work.

I spoke with other MAX attendees who expressed some disappointment with their sessions, so I initially thought that maybe I was just lucky. Then I asked the other attendees if they ever left a session that wasn’t going well and I was shocked to learn that none of them had left any sessions.

There were so many enticing sessions in every time slot that I wonder why people would sit through a session that wasn’t living up to expectations. Three or four times during the conference I found that my first choice wasn’t going to be worth my time, so I stood up and headed to my second choice (and, in one case, to my third choice — which ended up being excellent). No harm to anyone and a better conference experience for me.

I expect that most people stay in a session that is spiraling down the drain because they think it’s rude to leave. It’s not rude. The presenter has already been rude to you by wasting your time. Life is too short and your company has paid too much money for you to suffer through a sub-par, unpracticed presentation when an excellent alternative is two doors down.

I’ve grown less patient with poor presenters as I’ve learned more about how little it takes to deliver a good presentation. A one hour presentation takes 4-7 hours of preparation — not a lot — so I’m not asking too much for the materials and visual aids to be well thought-out and organized. Some presenters have no sense of time and spend a disproportionate amount of it on relatively unimportant parts of their topic. This leads them to rush through the later — and more valuable — content to fit it in the last 10 minutes. A single practice run through the presentation would have highlighted this problem, so there is no excuse to have such poor clock management.

Finally, some of the presenters on whom I walked out were simply afraid of public speaking. They mumbled, they never looked at the audience (preferring to look at the slides or the computer screen, which makes it harder to hear them), or they weren’t able to speak in complete sentences. If you know that you will be presenting at a conference and you have difficulty with public speaking, you owe it to yourself, your attendees, and your topic to gain confidence and composure by practicing public speaking. Join Toastmasters or find other opportunities to speak in front of audiences.

As a conference attendee, you are responsible for maximizing the conference’s value to you. Don’t be afraid to leave a session that isn’t going well. You will find more satisfaction in the conference and derive greater enjoyment from your experiences when you proactive about protecting your time.

I regret that I will not be able to complete this week’s HCI assignment due to the fact that I will be attending Adobe MAX. During my time at MAX I will be attending five hours of sessions concerned with Experience Design (XD) and User Experience (UX) from luminaries such as Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr.

I feel that this dedication to the craft should excuse me from this week’s assignment. Besides, we both know that I’ll be getting more real-world knowledge from these MAX sessions than I would from preparing a usability study proposal for your class.

Regards,
David

All is forgiven. The CS3 Master Collection I won Saturday night at the Chicago onAIR bus tour event is adequate compensation for the hassles I had with the Adobe MAX site.

And yes, you have bought my eternal love and devotion.

XXXOOXOXOOX,
David

You suck. I switched from you to TMobile six years ago because you didn’t provide reception in my condo. I was happy with TMobile. They had exceptional coverage in my condo—and everywhere else I went, too¹! They had good prices and excellent customer service every time I called them. (Their in-store service left something to be desired, but sadly that’s parity for the industry.)

I had to switch back to you, AT&T, because you are the exclusive carrier of the iPhone. I had hoped that your network coverage would have improved in the last six years, but as soon as I powered on my iPhone in my condo I saw that it hadn’t changed at all. I love my iPhone, but your disgraceful coverage limits it’s utility and hampers my ability to recommend it to non-enthusiasts.

I was reminded of this again on Sunday while attending a pre-event for Adobe MAX in the McCormick Center west building. As soon as I stepped inside, I was down to one bar, and a half dozen paces further I had no service at all. I saw other iPhone users struggling with the same problem. People with other carriers, however, had no problems at all.

So, I simply have this to tell you: I completely empathize with those who are unlocking their iPhones to use them on other networks. The moment I’m out from under my contract with you, I’m unlocking my phone and returning to TMobile.

Good luck,
David

¹ TMobile’s data services in Chicago are pathetic, but I use Sprint for mobile broadband and couldn’t be happier with their coverage and speed.

I could write this off as a simple “oops” on Adobe’s part. I understand that some emails get lost in the shuffle. But two weeks earlier I had emailed them a simple question (“Will presentations be recorded and available for free or purchase?”) and never got a response to that email, either.

To what email address was I sending my letters? Reasonable question. What email address should I be using? The email addresses are a bit buried on the site. I would have hoped to find one on the registration summary page—but, alas, they are all hiding under the Event Fees tab. I’ve emailed questions@adobemax2007.com and I’ve emailed maxops@adobemax2007.com. If you know another one to try… IT’S TOO LATE! I can no longer afford to attend the pre-event.

Adobe, whose XD sessions I was planning to attend, has managed to design a Web site hides the important contact information, won’t let me give them more money, and has irritated me enough to somewhat diminish my opinion of them as a company.

After registering, I chatted with other developers in my company to determine what sessions would be of greatest benefit to the teams using or investigating Flex. I shuffled those in with some sessions I really wanted to attend and the resulting schedule is below.

Data Visualization with Flex

Customizing the Flex Framework

Continuous Integration with Flex, FlexUnit, and Ant

Optimizing ActionScript 3.0 Performance

Inspire Session: The Dawning of the Age of Experience

What Makes a Design Seem Intuitive?

Pixel Perfect Precision

XD: Prototyping Rich Internet Applications with Fireworks CS3

XD: Adobe’s Approach to Application Design

Optimizing Flex Applications

Designers and Developers CAN Love Each Other

Creating New Flex Components

Flex on Rails

I look forward to seeing some of you there!