Extended Flex ComboBox
April 16th, 2008
DEfusion posted an extended Flex ComboBox that works a treat check it out: FoxyComboBox
flexcursion and flex addiction
April 16th, 2008
Cairngorm event gotcha
April 15th, 2008
The latest version of Cairngorm i.e. Cairngorm v2.2.1 has an added helper method in the CairngormEvent class. CairngormEvent->dispatch(e:CairngormEvent). The other day I was busy debugging an application and came across the following code inside one of the views:
var event:CairngormEvent = new CairngormEvent(); dispatchEvent(event);
At first glance this seems completely normal but will fail silently and cease to trigger the associated command.
While I do appreciate the new CairngormEvent helper method which should look like this:
var event:CairngormEvent = new CairngormEvent(); event.dispatch();
for clarity towards fellow team members who may not be familiar with Cairngorm and better distinction between Cairngorm application events and standard view events, I recommend still using the original syntax to dispatch your events:
var event:CairngormEvent = new CairngormEvent(); CairngormEventDispatcher.getInstance().dispatchEvent(event);
This will ensure that the event is clearly dispatched by the Cairngorm framework and not your view.
Use Apache Ant, Flex Builder or FDT to increase team collabiration
April 14th, 2008
After taking the plunge and jumping into using Apache Ant to build my current project I can say that I highly recommend it to anyone who works in a team environment.
The advantage is that you can configure exactly how you would like your application to compile, build and deploy and share this same configuration with fellow colleagues.
The only configuration for other team members would be to set the path to their Flex 3 SDK directory.
To get started here is a tutorial worth reading.
When you have a moment I encourage you to give a sample project a test run compiling with Ant, and as a challenge see if you can set it up to email you if there were any build errors.
While you getting into it why not read through some Ant best practices.
Street level mapping ban
March 13th, 2008
The US Pentagon have banned Google from street level mapping various military bases around the country, so sadly no 3D panoramas of tanks and guns and manly things like that.
Read the full story on BBC news.