Archive for March, 2010

Troubleshooting Plug-in Installations into Flash Builder Standalone

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (2)

Issue:
Unable to install Eclipse plug ins in standalone Flash Builder. 
Insufficient privileges.

Reason:
Increased user privileges are required to install Eclipse plug ins into
the standalone distribution of Flash Builder

Solution:


  • On OS X and Windows XP, logged in to a user account with Administrator
    privileges, then launch and install the Eclipse plug ins.
  • On Windows Vista and Windows 7, launch Flash Builder via the “Run as
    Administrator” context menu option, authenticate if prompted and then
    install the Eclipse plug ins.



Note: If you are installing ColdFusion Builder or the LCDS Modeler plug
ins, you will need to run Flash Builder once using a user account that
is in the Administrator group on OS X or XP or with “Run As
Administrator” on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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Using the AIR 2 SDK in Flash Builder 4

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (2)

The release notes on Adobe Labs have instructions for overlaying the SDK in Flex Builder 3 with SDK 3.2.0 http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR_2:Release_Notes#AIR_2_SDK. You can follow these same instructions for Flash Builder 4 and the Flex 4 SDK.

Be sure that you follow these instructions exactly. You might expect that you can simply copy the files into the 4.0.0 folder and everything should work right? Well, (1) that’s not how it works and (2) you want to keep the AIR 2 beta and the Flex 4 release as separate SDKs in your development environment so that you can still use the stable Flex 4 SDK.

Simply copying the AIR 2 SDK into the existing 4.0.0 folder has some side effects. The most obvious effect is that once Flash Builder caches the Flex 4 framework, it won’t re-parse SWCs in the SDK library path. The most obvious one is airglobal.swc. Do this the wrong way and you’ll find that classes like TouchEvent are missing from code hints.

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Migrating Projects from Flex Builder 3 to Flash Builder 4

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (0)

Here’s a few simple steps for importing your existing projects from Flex Builder 3 to Flash Builder 4:

  1. File > Import > Other…
  2. In the Import dialog, choose General > Existing Projects into Workspace
  3. “Select root directory”, click Browse… and select your previous Flex Builder 3 workspace root
  4. Finish

To get the benefits of the Flex 4 SDK compiler performance improvements without upgrading your project to Flex 4:

  1. Go to Project > Properties
  2. Select Flex Compiler
  3. Use a specific SDK, choose Flex 4.0
  4. Check “Use Flex 3 compatibility mode”
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Adobe Flash Professional Workflow* in Flash Builder 4

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (0)

It might be easy to overlook, but Flash Builder 4 has new workflow integration with Adobe Flash Professional. However, there’s some fine print.

Unless you’re on the latest prerelease of CS5, you’ll have to wait. To be 100% clear, CS4 is not supported.

Here’s what to look forward to:

  • File > New > Flash Professional Project
  • Flash Professional Component and Container from Design View

That’s about it for the features you can see. Not much more to say right now until the features are enabled. Stay tuned.

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Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 Released

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (1)

I’m happy help announce that Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 have been released. Find more information and download a trial here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/.

There’s plenty of new features to talk about. Here are my personal, time-saving favorites:

  • ASDoc in code hints
  • MXML proposal cycling
  • CamelCase shorthand in code hints
  • Vector support
  • Move refactoring
  • Package rename/move refactoring
  • Package Explorer
  • Call Hierarchy
  • Auto indentation
  • Flex 4 states code editor support

Read my article on Adobe Developer Connection to find out more about developer productivity enhancements in Flash Builder 4 http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flashbuilder4_productivity.html.

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Implicit Imports in MXML

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Jason San Jose | Comments (0)

You might wonder sometimes why import statements aren’t automatically inserted in MXML Script blocks. This is actually a feature in Flash Builder that uses the set of implicit imports defined by the MXML compiler.

If you add “-keep” to your additional compiler arguments, you can see the .as files generated for your MXML files. You’ll find the generated files in bin-debug/generated/<component name>-generated.as. Here’s the output for a Flex 4 MXML file.

import flash.accessibility.*;
import flash.debugger.*;
import flash.display.*;
import flash.errors.*;
import flash.events.*;
import flash.external.*;
import flash.geom.*;
import flash.media.*;
import flash.net.*;
import flash.printing.*;
import flash.profiler.*;
import flash.system.*;
import flash.text.*;
import flash.ui.*;
import flash.utils.*;
import flash.xml.*;
import mx.binding.*;
import mx.core.ClassFactory;
import mx.core.DeferredInstanceFromClass;
import mx.core.DeferredInstanceFromFunction;
import mx.core.IDeferredInstance;
import mx.core.IFactory;
import mx.core.IFlexModuleFactory;
import mx.core.IPropertyChangeNotifier;
import mx.core.mx_internal;
import mx.filters.*;
import mx.styles.*;
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