Stretch Media - Adobe Flex RIA Blog - Flex 3

What happened to drag in 3.4?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:38:00 -0500

The major app i've been working on for the past 2 years has been happily progressing through the iterations of the 3.x framework in Flex, until 3.4. All of a sudden my drag operations stopped functioning correctly. To be specific, any doDrag() operation has died and my eventListeners for MOUSE_MOVE don't seem to be getting dispatched when a component is dragging. I have deadlines, which means I've just moved back to 3.3 and won't have time to look into this right now.... as is usual... But has anyone else had this issue?

trace() output stops working with -optimize=true

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:39:00 -0500

I guess this one could be filed under the 'guess that makes sense' category, but none the less was a bit of a head-scratcher to figure out. Basically, I have a couple of external libraries which I'm using in my current Flex project. I was trying to use the global trace() function within these libraries, but there was nothing getting output. Wha? I was in debug mode... I have the debug player... this has worked before... wtf? Skip back... about a month ago my Subversion provider did a major migration which caused me massive headaches, and basically, I had to wipe out all my projects, and check them out fresh from the new svn repository locations, instead of just updating the repo address. In doing this, I thought I got all my settings correct, but alas... One particular Library project (the project in question above) had -optimize=true as compiler argument. I saw this and didn't figure it for the issue as you have the -debug argument, and -debug-verbose which deal with output stuff. Finally, after googling/flexcodering/blog searching/etc... along with confirming my mm.cfg file and flashlog.txt setup was correct, I began trying stuff willy-nilly to get this fixed. That's when I discovered that -optimize=true does indeed prevent any trace outputs. And that's the morale of this blog post :-)

Cool New Flex App

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:55:00 -0500

Check out this new cool new Flex app: Rombla. Rombla is an online "no programming" site builder that enables designers to create fully-editable websites using simple visual editing tools and then share them with their clients to edit and maintain. I was able to design and build a basic template in about 5 minutes and a full site in about 25. Some cool features but my favorite has to be the color scheme mixer where you can create your own palettes in Kuler then import them into Rombla. Then you can really experiment by changing layouts and navigation. You can literally change the entire look and feel of your site in seconds. It's addictive for a designer and super easy and fast for clients to do their own edits - great for people who don't like getting caught up with endless text edits. Check it out at: http://www.rombla.com/

Double click to edit DataGrid/List

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:10:00 -0500

After some brief searching on this topic I pulled up an entry from FlexCoders back in August of 2007 where Chris Huyler had figured out and put together a custom DataGrid to listen for a double click event rather than the default single click for itemEditor instances. I needed both DataGrid and List support using this feature, so using Chris' example for DG, I modified for List as well. All credit goes to Chris for figuring this out, and my thanks... here's an example of each below: DataGrid

package com.bm.custom_components

{

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import flash.geom.Point;



import mx.controls.DataGrid;

import mx.controls.listClasses.IListItemRenderer;

import mx.events.DataGridEvent;



public class DoubleClickEditDataGrid extends DataGrid

{

public function DoubleClickEditDataGrid() {

	super();

}



private var triggeredEditable:Boolean = false;



public function triggerItemEditor(event:MouseEvent):void

{

	var r:IListItemRenderer = mouseEventToItemRenderer(event);

	var p:Point = itemRendererToIndices(r);

	if ( columns[p.x].editable != false )

	{

		if (!editable)

		{

			editable=true;

			triggeredEditable = true;

			addEventListener(DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END,
 triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

		var dEvent:DataGridEvent = new DataGridEvent(DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_BEGINNING, 
false, 
false, 
p.x, 
null, 
p.y, 
null, 
r, 
p.y);

		dispatchEvent(dEvent);

	}

}



private function triggeredEditorEnd(event:DataGridEvent):void

{

	if ( triggeredEditable )

	{

		editable = false;

		triggeredEditable = false;

		removeEventListener( DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

	}

}

}

}

List

package com.bm.custom_components

{

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import flash.geom.Point;

	
import mx.controls.List;

import mx.controls.listClasses.IListItemRenderer;

import mx.events.ListEvent;

	
public class DoubleClickEnabledList extends List

{

	public function DoubleClickEnabledList(){}

		

	private var triggeredEditable:Boolean = false;



	public function triggerItemEditor(event:MouseEvent):void

	{

		var r:IListItemRenderer = mouseEventToItemRenderer(event);

		var p:Point = itemRendererToIndices(r);

		if (!editable)

		{

			editable=true;

			triggeredEditable = true;

			addEventListener(ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

		var dEvent:ListEvent = new ListEvent(ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_BEGINNING,
false,
 false, 
-1, 
p.y, 
null, 
null);
		dispatchEvent(dEvent);

	}

		

	private function triggeredEditorEnd(event:ListEvent):void

	{

		if ( triggeredEditable )

		{

			editable = false;

			triggeredEditable = false;

			removeEventListener( ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

	}

}

}

Using external services-config.xml files and setting up on Mac

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:18:00 -0500

Problem: I want to reference a remote instance of the services-config.xml file for a project I'm working on. I'm now developing on the mac platform (which I love) and need to figure out how to reference it. Solution: 1) Connect to and "mount" the external drive on which the services-config.xml file resides. Connecting to the remote drive via Finder by choosing Go -> Connect to Server or Cmd+K will give you access to the networked drive, but doesn't help you when you need to reference that drive (mapping in Windows) within the compiler settings in FlexBuilder. So... Fire up Terminal and navigate to the root of your system, and then into your Volumes directory. Create a new directory here as follows:

mkdir [new_name]

Choose something relevant as the name as you'll be referencing it in a second. Next, use the following command to "mount" your remote network drive to this new drive you've just created.

mount_smbfs //[userame]:[password]@[remote_server_url]/[drive]/ /Volumes/[new_name]

Each of the vars used here is pretty straight forward, but make sure you use the same when you reference the "mounting" location in /Volumes You won't be returned with any confirmation of success, but if you don't get any error, then it's setup successfully. Now, go back into FlexBuilder, and setup your services pointer to:

-services '/Volumes/[new_name]/ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml'

or whatever your path may be.

A Persistent/Interactive Tooltip in Flex

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:12:00 -0500

I came across a requirement at work a few weeks back which involved an "interactive" tooltip... We needed to provide a summary of information in the tooltip, but then provide a link button to a more detailed document. I came up with the following example by creating some functionality around the DataGrid mouse movements to display a "tooltip" (in reality a Menu instance) at the mouse position. Rather than digging into the framework to try and extend the ToolTip class to make it "stick" when moused over, I realized we've got popup menu functionality like that already. Slap a custom menu item renderer in there, skin it, and you've got a mousable, interactive tooltip instance. I could have gone the extra mile and created a custom DataGrid instance using this new functionality, but I'm lazy so I'm just going to post the instance I implemented and let you figure out how to implement it for yourself :-) The idea being that it could be just as easily implemented on any List based control, and even with a bit of work any component in the Flex framework. Just modify the renderer to fit the content you need! Example Here Source Here

Copy from DataGrid to Clipboard/Excel in Flex

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A really simple example today for a pretty useful feature... being able to copy contents from a datagrid (or any structure which uses a dataProvider for that matter) onto the system clipboard, and into an application like Excel. Excel is able to recognize an HTML table format and pastes the structure into appropriate cells. The following example is tailored to that type of structure, but can really be formatted to whatever needs you have by modifying the createHTML() (or more appropriately named) method. View example here : Example And source here : Source Code

Disable single button in ToggleButtonBar

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:51:00 -0500

So after a short period of searching, there doesn't seem to be a straight-forward way to disable a single ToggleButtonBar button instance... here's what I found worked: UIComponent(tBBInstance.rawChildren.getChildAt(X)).enabled/disabled Anyone find a clearer way?

Installing CFEclipse/Subclipse plugins on FlexBuilder 3

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:07:00 -0500

A co-worker sent me this post for installing things through software updates. Issue is, trying to install through update sites would result in error: Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) - org.eclipse.emf.codegen.ecore.ui (2.3.0.v200706262000) requires plug-in "org.eclipse.jdt.core". Joao (Fernandes?) has posted the solution over on his blog: Link Here Note the comment I added about having to check a second option labeled: 'Eclipse Java Development Tools 3.3.1.r331_......' as well to get it to work. Thanks Joao!