Waiting For Her Ship

Long ago, family members would wait for their kin at ship docks, upon the warf anxiously awaiting to see loved ones again. During those times, it was filled with great anticipatation, impatatience, and worry.

In years past, people would meet at train stations. The host would sit patiently and wait for a period of time while waiting for their guest’s train to arrive at the station.

In years past till now, people still do this with all forms of transportation. Waiting for a car ride, waiting at the bus stop or subway station, all the while, those who wait pass the time in various ways. Some make allowances for such time, knowing that it is out of their control, so they make the most of it… others just get impatient.

This evening, while I drove in a car, I called her majesty via my cell phone to have her fetch a number from my computer I had forgotten to write down. Knowing there are certain times she is indisposed because of one form of entertainment or another, I took preemptive action to plan ahead for this, and thus called early. …not early enough.

I was forced to wait, just like generations before me, for her ride. Yet, her ride consisted of an interplanetary starship, landing at an Endor starport, on the Tarquinas server. The ship doesn’t physically exist, and she’s already physically arrived, even though her trip didn’t take her anywhere. I was the one moving, waiting silently on the phone… while she dilligently gave the C-3P0 model droid her ticket so she could catch the ship to Correllia, and then promptly gave me her attention as her computer then dumped all physical memory as it always does attempting to run that infernal, RAM hogging game.

Have we truly transcended to a new age where we no longer wait for someone remote to physically arrive, but rather wait for someone who’s physically remote, to arrive at their non-physical destination? Seems like displaced courtesy and patience to me…

…still, had my parents waited to start dinner until my Starcraft game was over, I would of had less arguments in college when I lived at home part of the time. There are certain digital engagements and meetings one must be present for, even if you physically haven’t moved. It is important to note, however, that your attention is still grounded in one world or the other.

…maybe that’s the next age; when your attention can be in two places at once, regardless if that place is physical, or digital. I’ve seen some co-workers and a manager or two do it. Who knows.

Anyway, my point with the above is I’m not just taking into account people’s physical availability nowadays, but also their digital ones. Some just digital. Really, it comes down to how much time they can give me attention, but what I find fascinating, is I’m taking premptive action towards travel time that doesn’t really take you anywhere, knowing that her majesty will be busy during that time… even if I’m standing right next to her.

Or maybe this metaphor is shot out of game context. Fuggit, I’m going to bed.

Why Central Matters Editorial Discussion

So last night, Phillip Kerman posted a link to the editorial I wrote for MX Developer’s Journal. I was curious if he really did like it as I’m insecure about a lot of people’s feelings for Central. It’s cut and dry with other technologies, and since Central is so new, I’ve been trying to be, on purpose, more sensitive to understand people’s reactions and try to understand where they are coming from.

I went back to read what I wrote to see if his comments coincided positively with what I wrote, or, as a professional writer, he was bringing to our attention some glaring error I (or the editors) had missed. I have yet to take JD’s advice, and get the point quickly.

I then noticed that you could give feedback on the article. I didn’t know this, and saw that someone had. It was interesting that it had the typical response of not knowing what Central was buried in the middle, but additionally, it was a perspective of web applications I hadn’t heard before, so it was a good read. I tried to respond the best I could as we both are definately from different perspectives with different opinions on what the web does for us, for users, and where it’s going.

Anyway, if you have thoughts, if you could leave them here or there, I’d appreciate it.

Why Central Matters

Short Stint in Skinning Flash MX 2004 Components

So, helping a friend today with figuring out how to skin the Window’s title bar and the ScrollPane’s Scrollbars.

The first took some working, but originally, she looks like this:

And using this code:

_global.styles.Window.setStyle("borderStyle", "outset");
mx.managers.PopUpManager.createPopUp(_root,
mx.containers.Window,
   true,
   {skinTitleBackground: "test",
   skinCloseUp: "bu",
   closeButton: true});

She looks like this:

Notice in the above code, I pass in the skin variables in the initialization object. There is another to do this ahead of time as I’ll show you below. The strings are the linkageID’s of the movie clip’s I’ve created. The skin creation is really simple:

– create a movie clip
– put art in it
– right click on the symbol in the library
– give it a linkageID name
– make sure it’s exporting in frame 1 (otherwise, you’ll have to put it manually on stage somewhere before you use it)
– in the AS 2.0 Class field, type “mx.skins.SkinElement” (this makes the movie clip size with the component)

Done!

However, for components within components, you don’t have control of their constructors, nor access to them usually. Now, there may be another way to do this, but accessing the default skin properties is easy. In the ScrollPane’s case, here’s how he normally looks.

However, if I want to skin the Scrollbar, I merely set the prototype values to something different than the default before creating the ScrollPane:

mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.scrollTrackName = "scrollbar_track_green_mc";
mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.upArrowUpName = "scrollbar_arrow_mc";
mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.downArrowUpName = "scrollbar_arrow2_mc";
mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.thumbTopName = "thumbTop";
mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.thumbMiddleName = "thumbMiddle";
mx.controls.scrollClasses.ScrollBar.prototype.thumbBottomName = "thumbBottom";

attachMovie("ScrollPane", "mc", 0);
mc.setSize(320, 240);
mc.contentPath = "test1.jpg";

He now looks like this:

Granted, now that I’ve set the prototype, all Scrollbars will use the same skins, so this method does not allow for individual Scrollbar skinning, but I’m sure there is a way somehow; I’m still learning.

Hope this helps!

Generate Flex Component Code via Flash

If this script was developed further, one could generate Flex component code by dragging Flash components to the stage for those more used to visually laying out forms vs. using the tag based approach. Anyway, works for Buttons and Labels. The Accordion started to get deep, so I’m pulling the plug, but thought it was a pretty interesting concept nonetheless. I wonder if Brady will work on a similiar concept using Dreamweaver’s JSFL?

Generate Flex Component Code – JSFL