Archive for August, 2005

File Upload is Here!

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Peter Ent | Comments (6)

At long last, it is now easy to upload files from Flash and Flex applications. Thanks to a new feature of Flash Player 8, you can abandon your clunky, quirky, javascript and invisible HTML forms.

Follow this link to learn more about file upload as well as new features in Flash Player 8 that benefit Flex.

I have to tell you, as a vetern of adding file upload capability to Flash applications, this is truely a godsend. The Flash engineers have listened and really came through.

Oh yeah, your Flex apps run much faster and use less memory, too!

Dialing for Components

Posted on August 9, 2005 by Peter Ent | Comments (4)

A while ago I wrote a DevNote article and a blog entry describing how you can build a component. What started out as a simple component, got increasingly more complex. To the basic component I showed how you can style and skin it and add events. All in all, it wasn’t a bad bit of writing. I hope it was helpful.

I want to offer you another look at building components. This time using Flash to make the graphic skins and MXML for the structure. This technique does use ActionScript, but it is kept to a minimum and does not use ActionScript classes.

DialDetails.gif
The Dial Component

Click here to download the components and examples: Download file

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I AM ORANGE: 1976-1980

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Peter Ent | Comments (7)

Like many seniors in high school I thought about going to college and which college that would be. By now I was very sure I wanted to work with computers and write software. So the college I would go to would have to offer a degree in computer science. Back in 1976 this was not common. Even Princeton University, so close to home, did not offer a degree in computer science and in fact, offered very few computer software courses. As fate would have it, the very first college brochure I received was from Syracuse University.

Syracuse University, I would find out, was very unique for its time. It not only offered a B.S. in Computer Science, it also had the School of Computer and Information Science. Not only that, S.U. had SULIRS – Syracuse University Library Information Retrieval System. The entire card catalog was computerized. I knew these people had their act together and it was the place for me. In September 1976 my mother, sister, and I packed me up and went off to S.U. where the Goon Squad moved me into my dorm with my soon-to-be horrible roommate (but that’s a whole other series of articles).

Keywords: Network, DEC, IBM, LISP, Computer Science

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Government Work – Things Sure Have Come Along Way

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Peter Ent | Comments (1)

When I was going to high school, a career in computer science wasn’t on the top of everyone’s list. At least not at my high school. One fellow was going off to West Point, another off to Stanford, and so forth. My own plan was to go to Syracuse University. I think the slacker generation started with mine as most of the student body ridiculed anyone with plans for their future.

But I digress. When I was a senior an opportunity presented itself. The Forrestal Reseach campus at Princeton, N.J. had an opening for an intern in the General Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The internship included summer and winter breaks from college. I applied and was accepted. I knew Fortran which they were keen on back then.

Keywords: Fortran, vector graphics, raster graphics, modelling

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