Peter deHaan

Here is a list of some of the various blog posts from the Flex SDK and Flex Builder team’s blogs that I’ve been reading over the past week:

• Matt Chotin: 360Flex Europe is soon!
• Codedependent (Chet Haase): Lines and Tigers: Customizing ComboBox
• James Ward – RIA Cowboy: Around the World with Flex and Adobe AIR
• Peter Ent: Viewing PDFs with AIR
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Conference Love: WEBDU 2008 Sydney AU June 12-13
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Conference Love: FlashBelt Minneapolis, MN June 10-13
• FLEXing My Muscle (Raghu Rao): Flash for Flex Developers I – Importing artwork from Flash CS3 into Flex
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): SlideRocket on Flex 3 – 250 Trial Accounts
• Peter Ent: itemRenderers: Part 4: States and Transitions (plus Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): ADOBE MAX 2008 – Call for Speakers and Sessions
• Pearls of Flex (Sreenivas Ramaswamy): Documentation about Creating a Automation delegate for custom components in Flex
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Hello AIR/Flex Builder on Linux
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Adobe MAX 2008 :: 3 Days, 120 Sessions Posted
• Flex Team blog: Flex Builder for Linux Alpha 3 Now Available
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Call for sessions for MAX 2008

In case you didn’t see the news, but Adobe launched Photoshop Express today!

For more information, check out John Nack’s blog entry, “Photoshop Express RIA arrives!” (and “A note about PS Express terms of use”), or Ted Patrick’s blog entry, “PhotoShop Express on Flex 3″.

Curious what other people are saying? Check out some of the following links:

• Gizmodo: Adobe Photoshop Express Now Live: Free Online Photoshop for Everyone
• DVICE: Adobe Photoshop Express launches today for online editing
• Lifehacker: Photoshop Express: Not the Full PS Package, but Good Web-Based Editing
• Uncrate: Adobe Photoshop Express
• CNET News: Adobe opens shop on Web-based Photoshop Express

Here is a list of some of the various blog posts from the Flex SDK and Flex Builder team’s blogs that I’ve been reading over the past week:

• Flex Team blog: Feedback on curriculum
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): ADOBE MAX 2008 Events – Mark your calendars!
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): FREE FREE FREE Adobe Flex Builder 3 Pro for Education. and Free Adobe Flex Builder 3 Pro for Education.
• Code Dependent (Chet Haase): Top Drawer, Part III: Taking Shape (Part I and Part II)
• Pearls of Flex (Sreenivas Ramaswamy): AdvancedDataGrid, Charts and OLAP source gets unziped in FlexBuilder Pro version
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Conference Love, Conference Love: FITC Toronto April 19-22 (10% discount), Conference Love: 360Flex Europe April 7-9 2008 Milan, Italy, and Conference Love: Scotch On AIR – April 11th 2008 – Dublin Ireland!!!
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Do the “Adobe Pre-Release Forums” suck?
• Mac Martine: Adobe Online Developer Week
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): 3D Interactive Video on a sphere!
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Changes from Flex Beta 3 to Flex 3 Release

A day later than usual, but here is a list of posts I managed to whip up over the past week over on my Flex examples blog, blog.flexexamples.com:

• Displaying an image saved as a Base64 encoded string in Flex 3
• Horizontally aligning items in a FormItem container in Flex
• Changing the layout direction of a form item in Flex
• Horizontally aligning tabs within a TabBar control in Flex
• Creating custom pop-up windows with the PopUpManager class (redux)
• Vertically aligning tabs within a TabBar control in Flex
• Creating an undraggable Alert control in Flex
• Customizing a FormItem container’s label in Flex 3
• Applying a cascading style sheet to a TextArea control in Flex
• Setting the layout direction of a TileList control in Flex

I didn’t have time to post this yesterday, but here is a quick update on all the new entries over at my other blog, Flex Examples, during the past 7 days:

• Checking to see if the ExternalInterface API is available in Flex
• Returning values from JavaScript in your Flex applications using the ExternalInterface API
• Calling ActionScript functions from your HTML templates using the ExternalInterface API
• Setting the background alpha on a Panel container in Flex
• Using a CheckBox to filter items in a DataGrid in Flex
• Setting the border alpha on a Panel container in Flex
• Validating strings using the StringValidator class
• Setting or clearing the application background image in Flex
• Setting a complete effect on a ProgressBar control in Flex
• Changing live dragging on a TileList control in Flex

No real trends this week, although there are a few entries on the ExternalInterface API and the Panel container.

Last week I did a post, This Week’s Top Posts (3/9), on some excellent blog entries by various people on the Adobe Flex teams.

This week there seems to be a bunch more really good articles:

• Codedependent (Chet Haase): Finally, Some Code! (Top Drawer, Part I) and Top Drawer, Part II
• Alex’s Flex Closet (Alex Harui): Custom ILists, CheckBoxDataGrid, Merged Arrays, Custom ILists, ComboBox Prompts, and Custom ArrayCollections, Adding New Items to DataGrid
• Matt Chotin: Please review the Flash Player Security article
• Pearls of Flex (Sreenivas Ramaswamy): DateChooser with support for backgroundColoring some dates
• Flex Team blog: Flex Poster Problems and Fixes
• Matt Chotin: Cool March Madness Mashup Contest — Flex Entries Needed
• Alex’s Flex Closet (Alex Harui): Flex 3 DataGrid Footers
• Pearls of Flex (Sreenivas Ramaswamy): Creating OLAPCube in AS, Simple uses of OLAP, and Introducing OLAPTimeDimension for OLAP
• Matt Chotin: Do you have the Adobe Developer Desktop?
• Flex Team blog: New Flex cookbooks release
• Peter Ent: itemRenderers: Part 3: Communication (plus Part 1, and Part 2)
• Matt Chotin: Please take the Flex and ColdFusion Developer Survey
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Understanding Flex 3 Migration Issues (Part III) (plus Part I, and Part II)
• much ado about something (Narciso “nj” Jaramillo): Flex 3/CS3 skinning resources

And now for something completely different…

Here are a bunch of the best [Flex-related] posts from around the Adobe water cooler over the past week (or so). Lots of really excellent posts, so if you have some time, check a few of them out.

Random:

• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): FXB3 Tip – That “libs” folder!
• Alex’s Flex Closet (Alex Harui): DataGrid Double-Click To Edit
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): AS3Crypto Library
• Peter Ent: itemRenderers: Part 1: inline renderers and itemRenderers: Part 2: External renderers
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Using String.slice with negative numbers
• Flex Doc Team: Creating ASDocs for Custom AIR Components
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Flex Skin Design Extensions & Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3
• Alex’s Flex Closet (Alex Harui): Smooth Scrolling List
• Alex’s Flex Closet (Alex Harui): CheckBox selection in DataGrid and List
• Pearls of Flex (Sreenivas Ramaswamy): GroupingCollection to group mails on Date and Subject
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Baseline alignment with constraints in Flex 3
• FLEXing My Muscle (Raghu Rao): How to apply the Data Visualization license on command-line in Flex 3 !
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Loading css when your application starts up
• FLEXing My Muscle (Raghu Rao): Changes in Flex 3 licensing model
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Using a border skin for a TitleWindow in Flex 3

Migrating from Flex 2 to Flex 3:

• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): Understanding Flex 3 Migration Issues (Part I) and Understanding Flex 3 Migration Issues (Part II)
• Flex Doc Team: Migrating applications from Flex 2 to Flex 3
• Peter Ent: Migrating from Flex 2 to Flex 3

Reminder: If you’re in NYC on April 18th, don’t forget there will be a Flex Camp on Wall Street from 9am-5pm. Check it out!

Time for another “semi-regular” update on my other blog, blog.flexexamples.com. Here are all the posts I’ve published in the past couple weeks:

• Creating a ControlBar container in Flex using ActionScript
• Aligning items vertically in a ControlBar container in Flex
• Displaying a Tree control as a pop up for a Flex PopUpButton control
• Setting effects with ActionScript in Flex
• Using embedded fonts with the Panel container in Flex
• Displaying the sort arrow in a Flex DataGrid control without having to click a column
• Styling Alert controls in Flex using the StyleManager class and setStyle() methods
• Setting a Button control’s icon to an asset from a SWF file in Flex
• Determining if a Flex application has focus using the activate and deactivate events
• Displaying a video in Flex using the NetConnection, NetStream, and Video classes
• Setting a custom broken image skin for the Image control in Flex
• Setting a custom required indicator skin on a FormItem container in Flex
• Dynamically adding new columns to a DataGrid control in Flex
• Converting objects to XML packets using the SimpleXMLEncoder class in Flex
• Displaying a dynamically loaded MP3 file’s ID3 information in Flex
• Setting the background alpha and background color of a DataGrid control in Flex
• Performing case [in]sensitive sorts using the DataGrid control in Flex
• Preventing line feeds in a TextArea control in Flex
• Setting the text alignment in a TextArea control in Flex
• Creating a simple image gallery with the Flex TileList control
• Calling JavaScript functions from your Flex applications using the ExternalInterface API

The following example shows how you can use embedded fonts with a Flash CS3 ComboBox control’s drop down menu.

Full code after the jump.

Continue reading…

The following example shows how you can use the metadataReceived event (MetadataEvent.METADATA_RECEIVED constant) to detect when the VideoDisplay has parsed the metadata from an FLV file in Flex 3.

Full code after the jump.

Continue reading…