Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Post AJUG: Flex is OK on the Server

    I’m convinced Flex is ok on the server. I’m convinced Flash developers are in no way a part of the Flex vision.

    Spoke about Flex & FlexBuilder tonight at the Atlanta Java User’s Group, and when talking about how Flash developers weren’t comfortable with Flex being on the server, but most Java developers I’ve seen on the Flexcoders list are, a lot of audience members were nodding their heads before I even finished the statement. I just met Flex’ target market tonight, first hand.

    Macromedia doesn’t encourage prototype usage in Flex, they don’t encourage using Flash to make Flex components, and they condone the use of Flex generated SWF’s outside the browser (Central non-withstanding).

    Although my time was my limited, and the speed of my speech accelerated, racing across details at 60mph, I think I got a lot of people at least interested in further investigating Flex. As a whole, I think the Roundbox Media Development team hopefully got many interested in OpenAMF, and Java & Flash integration in general.

    Thanks for letting me speak about Flex at your meeting, AJUG members! Thanks for inviting me, Dan!

  • Using a TextField in a class extending mx.core.View

    Since createChild(className:Object, instanceName:String) abstracts the creation of the actual object, TextField’s are hard. They aren’t supported as the first parameter, and doing a createTextField messes up your styles, but createLabel uses it’s own depth.

    There IS a depth variable, however, you must take care to access it in the right order. The best way is:

    createLabel("my_txt", depth++);

    If you do a ++depth, it’ll increment too soon, whilst the rest do a depth++ and overrwrite the depth of one of your controls, destroying it.

  • Flash RichTextEditor

    Yet another Flash MX 2004, ActionScript 2, RichTextEditor… or is it?

    I’ve been speaking with Igor Dimitrijevic over AIM for the past few months discussing Flash RichTextEditors, looking at the solutions out there, comparing notes on TextField, TextFormat, Flash Player HTML bugs/issues, and generally helping eachother out.

    After that, I can definately say Igor knows what he’s doing, and have full confidence this will, as of the posting date, be the best Flash RichTextEditor on the market.

    Until the Flash Player fixes some of it’s underlying problems with TextFormat not correctly writing HTML, as well as it’s erratic display of images in an input TextField, all RichTextEditors will have these inherent flaws, regardless of who codes them and with whatever workarounds/coding compensations. Regardless, Igor like me has been creating components since they were first SmartClips in Flash 5, so I’m sure he’s created it in such a way that it will be a solution for your project, and compensate for the Flash Player’s TextField problems.

    Try it out without downloading or installing anything!

    For you Flex users, I’ve worked with Abdul Qabiz to get the MXI format correct and sent it over to Igor, encouraging him to add install support for FlexBuilder 1.5. Cross your fingers!

  • Zinc & Debugging Permitted

    My Zinc commands don’t work if I have Debugging Permitted checked for my FLA. As soon as I uncheck that, it works fine.

    :: goes to look at docs ::

    Nope, can’t find it. Basically, my mdminit() command as well as my mdm.prompt(“MDM Loaded”) do squat when Debugging Permitted is checked. That was a fun frikin’ hour.

    :: goes to look at forum ::

    Yep, 2 frikin’ threads. There should be a high-level page added to the docs:

    – call mdminit();
    – make sure Debugging Permitted is not checked for your FLA

    …BACK TO WORK…