Thomas Boch Cédric Capoulun WP8 Usage of Flex in the astronomical frame Thomas Boch Cédric Capoulun T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
Flex ? RIA (Rich Internet Application) framework developed by Adobe “Flash programming for programmers” Development ActionScript MXML (for GUI description) Execution Relies on Flash Player T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
Flex pros Flash Player everywhere (Flash Player 9 installed on 94% machines) Fast startup time (wrt. Java applets) High level of interactivity Easy learning curve for the developer T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
Flex cons Installation (of Flash Player) is compulsory (wrt. AJAX RIA) Can be painful, especially on Linux systems and/or with non-savvy users Breaks the browser logics Back/forward button Print T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
SimPlay (1/2) SimPlay (Simbad disPlay) : a simple interactive viewer for Simbad objects Starting point : replace the Simbad clickable map Example: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=ngc7331&radius.unit=arcmin&Radius=2#lab_plot T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
SimPlay (2/2) Feature requirements: Lightweight viewer From an object name/position: load Simbad objects around this object on top of a DSS image Display/hide sources according to their object type Zoom/unzoom Display info of a selected source Localization T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
SimPlay architecture Browser CGI server Server-side Aladin target Aladin script PNG+VOTable URLs PNG image + VOTable with x,y source positions PNG+VOTable Cache Browser CGI server Server-side Aladin T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
SimPlay demo http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~boch/SimPlay/ T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
SimPlay offline version Predefined list of targets Application packaged with: Flash Player Image+VOTable data (corresponding to the predefined targets) Images chosen from HST and ESO Press Releases Astrometry retrieved through astrometry.net or manually in Aladin Aimed at Outreach public (WP5) T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009
Other development Nomenclature dictionary revamped in Flex: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/Dic9/ T. Boch - Euro-VO 3rd Tech Forum - Strasbourg - 16-18 March 2009