RIA for Enterprise 3.0

The first test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android (and Alfresco ECM) is now available for download on the FlexSpaces google code site. A more final version will be available on the Android Market for free. The first test version for iOS will use the “ad-hoc” testing Apple allows until an app is in the app store. For people interested in testing the iOS version (mainly for iPads, will fit on iPhone4 screens), email me (stevereiner at  integratedsemantics.com) your device uuid.   Test versions of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android and iOS will be available soon too.

Notes:

• Need to have flexspaces webscripts installed in your Alfresco server
• Use settings / preferences on the initial login page to enter server domain/protocol/port.
• Geared for Android tablets, will also fit on high-res smart phones at least 480 pixels wide
• Geared more for landscape mode when have the navigation tree displayed (turn off in the view menu)
• App size is larger due to including captive air run-time so you don’t need to install the latest air separately
• Some features were left out for now (open calais semantic tagging, favorites section, local files panel, wcm)
• The FlexSpaces mobile project source is not checked into google code yet
• FlexSpaces in general still needs its start workflow feature fixed for Alfresco 4.0

FlexSpaces (open source Flex / desktop AIR application for Alfresco ECM) has been ported to Flex Mobile.

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an iPad2:

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an Android Tablet (ASUS Transformer):

FlexSpaces Mobile has the full features of desktop FlexSpaces AIR (creation and editing features, not just browsing and viewing).

The cool thing is FlexSpaces Mobile supports multiple mobile platforms from the same codebase (and has mostly the same code-base as the desktop AIR and browser versions).

Used Flash Builder 4.5.1 and Flex 4.5.1. (need to try with Flash Builder 4.6 / Flex 4.6 pre-release ).

All the features work (except favorites which should work if add at least one shortcut through the regular Alfresco client). More work still todo (performance, polish, etc.). Also need to add a preference dialog (for desktop version too) so things that are now in FlexSpacesConfig.xml can  be set without repackaging (or at least be able to set the repository url in the login dialog).

Changes for mobile have not been checked into the FlexSpaces google code project yet. Think FlexSpaces Mobile will be free and open source too. Also should have a commercial license / premium version too.

FlexSpaces doesn’t use CMIS (uses custom webscripts) so it can expose all the capabilities of Alfresco, not just what is in CMIS.

CMIS Spaces Mobile, based on FlexSpaces Mobile, is also up and running on Flex Mobile 4.5.1. This can support all repositories that support CMIS (Alfresco, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText, Adobe ADEP / Day CRX, etc.) Look for a future blog post with videos of CMIS Spaces Mobile in the near future.

These mobile apps are geared to the larger screens found on tablets (and desktops).  Having layouts for smart phones is not planned (some things could be done easily: tree navigation panel can be hidden already, smaller / less toolbar icons could be used. Other things would be more work: dialogs would need smaller layouts, multi-pane sections (version history, workflow attachments, etc.) would need to be done as overlays.

Great news on Apple relaxing iOS development tool restrictions

Now using Flex with coming mobile support and AIR to develop both for Android and iOS (with “Adobe AIR Packager for iPhone”) will be possible.

Supporting FlexSpaces (for Alfresco and for Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2), CMIS Spaces (for content servers supporting the CMIS standard), FlexibleDashboard, and FlexibleShare AIR apps on these additional platforms is getting more feasible.

Since these apps are geared to larger screens, targeting iPad and Android tablets makes more sense than the small screens (iPhone, Android mobile phones).

Steve Reiner

Integrated Semantics

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