Main | What's new and changed in Cairngorm 2.0 alpha »
February 01, 2006
Cairngorm 2.0 Alpha available for Flex 2.0 Beta Build
The release of Cairngorm 2.0 has been very much predicated on the release of the beta build of Flex that was made publically available yesterday - with that announcement out of the way, I'm delighted that we can now make an alpha build of Cairngorm 2.0 available to you here .
Let me tell you where we've come from, and where we're going. We're very much embracing the "alpha software" culture that surrounds the Adobe Labs project - we're giving out software that's early in it's cycle, so that you can play with it, so that you can feedback to us on it. Our philosophy with Cairngorm has always been that it will not be implementation of theoretical discussion on what best-practices could be, but will reflect techniques and approaches that we are using with success on real-world Flex consulting engagements. What you've got, is where we're at so far that we're confident releasing in that vein.
As best we could achieve, we've kept the APIs for Cairngorm 2.0 alpha the same as they were for Cairngorm 0.99; in doing so, we've ported to AS3.0 and leveraged the Flex 2 framework and ActionScript 3.0 as we think best right now. The purpose of this blog entry is just to get the code in your hands, and let you get a Cairngorm 2.0 + Flex 2 sample up and running in the new Flex Builder build as soon as possible. In upcoming blog posts, we'll walk through some of the things that have happened from 0.99 to 2.0, and some of the things we're thinking about. For now, here's how to get going with the zip.
Installing Cairngorm 2.0 Login Sample
- Extract the zip file into a local directory on your machine - for purposes of these instructions, let's call it c:\dev\cairngorm2\.
- Launch Flex Builder 2 and choose "New Project" from the File menu. Create a new Flex project.
- In answer to "Will this project be using Enterprise Services", choose "No".
- In the following screen in the new project wizard, give the project name "CairngormLogin", set the Project Location to "c:\dev\cairngorm2\" and set the Main application file to "CairngormLogin.mxml"
- Press the "Finish" button
You should now have a new Flex project, with CairngormLogin.mxml opened and ready to run. Press the run button on the FlexBuilder toolbar, and the application should compile and launch into your browser.
The CairngormLogin application is by no means intended to be a showcase for Cairngorm; it is a barebones application that allows you to prove your Cairngorm installation is working, and demonstrates a little of the usage of the API.
In upcoming blog posts, we'll discuss the design features of the current alpha build, and we'll discuss some of the future additions we'll add to the alpha. We'll ensure that by the time Flex 2 launches, you have a stable build of Cairngorm 2.0 to accompany it.
The ModelLocator implementation is one of the key differences in Cairngorm 2.0, reflecting the fact that you can no longer bind to statics with Flex 2.0. In building Cairngorm 2.0, and moving to the singleton approach we have at present, we uncovered a binding issue in the previous Flex alpha. The Flex team (who recognise how many of our Flex customers are basing their architectures upon Cairngorm) responded incredibly well, prioritised fixing this issue for the new beta build, so that you could have Cairngorm 2.0 to accompany this beta.
So, big thanks to the Flex team. In addition, big thanks to the rest of the Cairngorm committee who have debated and approved the various changes we've made, and thanks to the various contributors - notably Alex Uhlmann and Alistair McLeod of Adobe Consulting - who have made this build happen.
Find us on flexcoders if you want to discuss the release in detail; I'm just delighted we can make this build available to you all now !
Posted by swebster at February 1, 2006 04:54 PM
Comments
Hi Steven!
It's great to see a new blog from you. I've already added to my bloglines account.
Good luck!
: )
Posted by: Carlos Rovira at March 4, 2006 12:58 AM
Followed your instructions to the "T" and it doesn't work. Says something is wrong with the and can't find component. Also says that CoirngormLogin.html cannot be found.
Posted by: jason at June 29, 2006 08:55 PM