- When you are not idle for a period of time, the application syncs with and online database.
- Complex Screensavers – Show full screen for how long the user has been away from its desk
- An Application that warns you when to take breaks because you been sitting way too long behind your computer. The possibilities are endless!

Other fun functions you can use with this is:

timeSinceLastUserInput — The time, in seconds, since the last mouse or keyboard input.
and

idleThreshold – The number of seconds that must elapse without keyboard or mouse input before a presenceChange event is dispatched. By default, the idle threshold is 300 seconds (5 minutes).

import flash.desktop.NativeApplication;
import nl.funkymonkey.firelog.core.*;
var IDLETIME:int = 5;//Yes that is seconds.

initIdleExampleApp();

function initIdleExampleApp():void
{
	NativeApplication.nativeApplication.idleThreshold = IDLETIME;
	NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(Event.USER_IDLE, onUserIdle);
	NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(Event.USER_PRESENT, onUserPresence);
	Logger.info("Status: Active - status will change if idle for more than " + IDLETIME + " seconds");
}

function onUserIdle(event:Event):void
{
	Logger.info("User has been Idle for at least " + IDLETIME + " seconds".);
	Logger.info("Here you can do what you want.");
}

function onUserPresence(event:Event):void
{
	Logger.info("User is active again, after being idle for " + IDLETIME + " seconds.");
	Logger.info("Now you can make your app get back to its normal state.");
}

What I have noticed with idle time is that the time is an indication and not a real value, it can be a second or two off (this can be caused by the Timer class, as Keith Peters describes here). So keep that in mind.

In my code I trace with FireLog, a simple logger for AIR, and you can find that here.

Here is an example AIR file:
[airbadge]Idle User,http://www.funky-monkey.nl/air/example/idle_screensaver.air,1.0.2[/airbadge]
Have fun coding you own little play things!

var libraryObject = new ClipInLibrary();
var iconBM:BitmapData = new BitmapData(128, 128, true, 0x00000000);
iconBM.draw(libraryObject);
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.icon.bitmaps = [iconBM];

I wanted to take that to the extreme and see if it was possible to add video to this, so below is the very simple code to draw every frame of a playing video file to a BitmapData Object. I specifically create the bitmap data within the ENTER_FRAME event, so i can dispose of it, and in the next loop create it again. So basicly i draw and clear, draw and clear etc.
The reason why i do this, is that this way you can also have alpha video in your dock (the example video below uses alpha channels in the video so you can test it!)

Enjoy!

PS. This example is only for Mac, you can do it with Windows, however this icon only supports 16×16 pixels, so the video would be a bit small

import flash.desktop.*;
import flash.events.*;

var videoURL:String = "http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/FLV/flash_with_alpha/300x180-Scr-f8-056alpha.flv";

var con = new NetConnection();
con.connect(null);

var stream:NetStream = new NetStream(con);

var video:Video = new Video();
video.attachNetStream(stream);
stream.play(videoURL);
stream.client = this;
addChild(video);

function createDockIcon(e:Event):void
{
var iconBM:BitmapData = new BitmapData(128, 128, true, 0x00000000);
iconBM.draw(video);
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.icon.bitmaps = [iconBM];
iconData.dispose();
}

this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, createDockIcon);

Thats all there is to it

Lets take a close look at these apps, first off is the eBay app; this allows users to keep a eye on their auctions and lets them know if they have been outbid, instantly. The AOL Music application lets users watch the hottest and latest top 100 videos strait to their desktop and the last one, the SearchCoders app lets users search the flexcoders mailing list archives, read blogs and chat with other users. They bring the user to the brand, so the audience you reach is much broader.

This opens up whole new possibilities for branded content and a complete new advertising model (which in my opinion has not been completely been discovered). Consider this; You have created an application and evertime you have new content, which you normally send out in a newsletter, the user gets notified by the application. Push instead of pull. Pretty nifty. When you are confined to the browser this simply isn’t possible. So now the content on the web can be truly interactive.

Adobe has done some pretty radical promoting to make this possible; They created the onAIR Bus Tour for their new product, with renowned speakers, people from Adobe giving lectures and hands-on sessions, industry guru’s talk about AIR, give away swag and if that wasn’t enough they even let Colin Moock (the one and only Flash GOD) do a free day of Actionscript3 coding, 9 hours of it! So they must be pretty serious about it. (to spend so much marketing budget on it).

This is what Adobe had to say about their new technology: “Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that enables web developers to use their existing web development skills, code and tools to build and deploy rich web applications and content to the desktop. Adobe AIR has a rich set of features, with support for building applications using HTML, JavaScript, Flex and Flash.”

And this is how i see it: “AIR lets you create cross-platform desktop applications, that enhance the users experience, using skills that you already know. and this can be HTML, JavaScript, Flex and Flash.”

Now this means a couple of things for developers like yourself. First, it is just an API that has the same syntax as Actionscript3, so there is no new major thing to learn and secondly you have (almost) complete access to your OS, which is really fukkin’ cool Some of the API’s you have at your disposal are:

■ Windowing API
■ FileSystem Class
■ Clipboard Class
■ SQLite database
■ Drag ‘n drop support
■ Update API

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be talking more on AIR, write tutorials about the wicked stuff you can do, look at some security aspects and present my own cool project i’ve been working on for a while now.

If you subscribe to my RSS feed you’ll be notified of any new articles.

Stay tuned!