Published on
September 27, 2007 in
Flex.
Over the weekend, I built a simple RDF reader to demonstrate some of the capabilities of Flex 2 for a presentation. I wanted to review what it takes, and post my code for others to enjoy.
I am using a RDF feed provided by the Adobe development center. I choose this feed simply because Adobe has an open cross domain policy, which allows Flex to ingest the feed without any need for a proxy. Learn more about the cross domain policy and it’s security implication here. There is also a site, here, that tracks some of the leading sites that support open cross domain policies – I.E. sites that appreciate Flex & Flash developers 
First, we want to setup several variables. Four of the five will receive their data from the feed itself.
Continue reading ‘Flex RDF Reader’
Published on
September 26, 2007 in
AIR and Flex.
Check out the custom Actionscript 3 class: AIR Remote Updater by Claus Wahlers for auto updating your AIR applications. The extra nice piece, you don’t need to maintain an extra version file. Claus’ class uses FZip to download only the application.xml file from your .air package on the server. One little bug I have found, this class throws a File I/O error when you run the AIR application in ADL (debugger). I have simply commented the call to the update() function during development.
Published on
September 23, 2007 in
AIR and Flex.
I have been working for quite some time on a new AIR application. Now that I have the basic functionality working, I want to improve the display. My first task was getting the main application window to become larger after a button is clicked. I achieved this by setting stage.stageHeight=numberValue;
The next task was getting rid of the standard window chrome in favor of an integrated window chrome. First, I changed a value in the main-app.xml file. You need to adjust two attributes on the rootContent tag from this:
<rootcontent systemchrome="standard" transparent="false" visible="true">[SWF reference is generated]</rootcontent>
To
<rootcontent systemchrome="none" transparent="true" visible="true">[SWF reference is generated]</rootcontent>
Now, Flex displays it’s own custom chrome, which looks sort of bad and definitely isn’t what I wanted in the end. I read several tutorials that suggested changing the WindowedApplication tag to Application.
Doing so, however, disables the stage.stageHeight resize that I had set initially. I discovered the answer I was seeking in a post by Leif Wells here. The trick is simply to set an attribute on the WindowedApplication tag to false. Specifically, the showFlexChrome attribute – like so: showFlexChrome="false"
Now, my stage.stageHeight still works, and I don’t have any chrome at all. I still need to setup a close button and the ability to move and resize the window via the mouse, but I don’t anticipate any issues with those items.
Published on
September 23, 2007 in
Flex.
Having a hard time getting rounded corners to work in your Flex / AIR application? So was I, until I stumbled across this post by Peter Braid. Apparently, it’s simply a matter of setting the containers borderStyle to solid. You can set the borderThickness to zero if you don’t require a border in the application design. Check out the simple, yet effective, demonstration application Peter built to see an example.
Headed to Chicago on September 30th to attend the Adobe Max conference. I am very excited! I’ve packed my schedule with sessions on AIR and Flex.
The conference runs October 1st – 3rd. It’s the first Adobe conference I have attended, and I it hope will be an awesome experience. The tickets and hotel were a little pricey, but my company is happily going to foot the bill. Without them, I don’t think I could muster the $2,000 for travel and board – not including the $1,495 for event tickets. Regardless, I’m off to Chicago in scant 9 days and couldn’t be more gleeful.
If you’re going – I’ll see you there
Published on
September 10, 2007 in
Flash and Flex.
BD4D and the Wellcome Collection are sponsoring a competition to create cool interactive flash apps. The winner gets a MacPro desktop computer and Apple display. As if I needed another reason to play with Flex right now. It looks like I could even enter my first flash video game using the word soup terms War & Political. But I think I can probably come up with something a little more ‘rich’ and interactive before the deadline on Friday 5th October 2007
The details:
Produce an interactive Flash piece that is playful and engaging using at least 2 words from the Word Soup (enclosed at the end of this document).
The interactive artist should be inspired by the words in the soup or the
connections between them and create a piece of content that will encourage
others to explore life medicine and art.
Word Soup:
MICROSCOPE PRESERVATION MILLION NURSE MOLECULAR TORTURE OPERATION
POLITICAL CURIOUS NUDE BULLET ROSES ANIMAL KNOCKOUT STEROID SILVER
INTESTINE CHILD PEOPLE WAR SCIENTIST SHRUNKEN ARTIFICIAL ALCOHOL BOTTLES
APOTHECARY VIRUSES WAR TATTOO MALARIA EUGENICS APOCALYPSE BABY DRUGS
SKELETON AMPUTATION VITAMIN DREAM SMOKE HEAD DOCTOR BRAIN TOOTH
INSPIRATION ACUPUNCTURE DEAD TRUTH MUTATION PAIN NURTURE NATURE LIFE ART
RADICAL LAB OBESITY MEDICINE BLOOD POWER POLITICAL WOMAN ILLNESS PRAYER
EXPERIMENT FEVER SEX MEMORY TONGUE WONDER END PLAGUE PILL
MASTERPIECE PLACEBO BLIND HEAD PREGNANT HAIR SLEEP HISTORY EXECUTION
FUNERAL RESEARCH HELP FREE BEAUTY INVISIBLE WALKING STUDIO CROSS ATTACK
YELLOW PAPER UNICORN THINGS ANCIENT HELIX CEREMONY EMBLEMATIC
REVOLUTIONARY SERENDIPITY MAPS CONCEPTUAL
Published on
September 10, 2007 in
AIR and Flex.
The AIR [Adobe Integrated Runtime] tour bus will be in New York on Sept. 24th. Be sure to head down and check it out if you have any plans to work with AIR. It will be at 87 Lafayette St New York, NY 10013. You’ll need to register as well, but you can take care of that here. I am looking forward to it!
Published on
September 9, 2007 in
Flex.
Andy McIntosh has written a great overview & tutorial on programmtic skinning in Flex. It was exactly the type of information I was searching for as I attempted to create my first skin.
I also came across a few more useful skinning tutorials here and here that are also a good read. These tutorials mix in graphical skinning as well, which is great but wasn’t exactly what I was looking for today. Of course, Adobe also has a few liveDocs on the subject of skinning that are also worth taking a look at – the graphical skin page and programmatic skin page. If you are just looking for skins, and not necessarily how to create skins then you should check out scale nine.
Published on
September 8, 2007 in
Flex.
I am a novice with Flex at this point. But the thing I am starting to love the most in Flex is states.
States are just as they seem, the different ’states’ of your application. For example an intro screen, a main app page, department pages etc. It’s a way to organize code and move between different ‘looks’ for your application. A quick start guide to states.
Flex has an inherent system for defining different, well.. states for your application and the transitions for moving between states. At this point, states are turning out to be the perfect way to modularize complex applications.
Published on
September 8, 2007 in
AIR and Flex.
While the Flex 2 style explorer isn’t new, it’s new to me as I begin my explorations into AIR. I found this app great for beginning to understand the difference between skinning and styling Flex components.
It’s also pretty cool because it allows you to export the new styles you have created. I found it a great way to work in Flex based CSS. Now, if only I could find a similar GUI app for working with existing HTML/XHTML based websites.
