---
title: "Desktop server + Flash GUI?"
date: 2003-06-19T13:34:00-04:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2003/06/19/flash-agg/
author: Les Orchard
---

# Desktop server + Flash GUI?

Still have been busy like crazy, but 
<a href="http://www.decafbad.com/blog/geek/flash_xml_magic.html" target="_top">as I wrote</a> back in April,
some of what I'm doing has been pulling me further into Flash MX and XML.
Also, in the few moments of free time I've had lately, I've been toying
with <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/viewcvs.cgi/dbagg/" target="_top">my own news aggregator</a>.  It's a
<a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/PersonalServer">PersonalServer</a>, written in <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Python">Python</a>, based on <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Twisted">Twisted</a>, and uses
<a href="http://www.sqlite.org" target="_top">SQLite</a> via <a href="http://pysqlite.sourceforge.net" target="_top">PySQLite</a>
for storage and juggling of items.
<br /><br />
So, today I've been thinking:  How hard would it be to bundle together a desktop app
composed of a backend in Python and a GUI in Flash?  Connecting the two is no problem
given whatever method of XML communication you want to pass between them.  Pairing
the two together to be launched on the guest OS would seem to be a bit of an
oddity.
<br /><br />
See, I like my news aggregator GUI in the browser.  It seems native there.  But
on the other hand, as far as interfaces go, what I want to make the browser
do tends to sound ugly.  I mean, yeah, there're all sorts of DHTML and <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/CSS">CSS</a> tricks
and XUL looks promising, but damn have I been noticing how slick Flash is
lately.  And fiddling around with <span style='background : #FFFFCE;'><a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/edit/Main/ActionScript?topicparent=Main.FilterData"><b>?</b></a><font color="#0000FF">ActionScript</font></span> has been pretty fun lately.  
<span style='background : #FFFFCE;'><a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/edit/Main/JavaScript?topicparent=Main.FilterData"><b>?</b></a><font color="#0000FF">JavaScript</font></span> has gotten a pretty bad reputation via crashy implementations, but
as dynamic scripting languages go, there are some nifty elegances I can pull
off in it.
<br /><br />
So...
  I've been reading a bit about 
<a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/" target="_top">Macromedia's Central</a> as far as 
desktop Flash goes, and I've seen the 
<a href="http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/rss_aggregator_sample_app.html" target="_top">News Aggregator sample app</a>,
but 
how about a maniacal mutant hybrid of Python and Flash?
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shortname=flash_agg

<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
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        <li class="comment" id="comment-221085293">
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                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.zanpo.com"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=8ece86b9eb93514da6f0300082374dbc&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.zanpo.com">genjo</a>
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                <a href="#comment-221085293" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-07-04T23:47:13">2003-07-04T23:47:13</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I was doing a search on Python and Flash, and stumbled upon your post.  Any luck with this?  I had the same idea... building apps in Python with a Flash front-end... they could talk to eachother via XML... so, how can you get python to create a wrapper for a flash gui?</div>
            
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