creacog

Product Owner/Manager; Digital Project Manager, ex-Developer Available for Product Owner roles
Product Owner/Manager; Digital Project Manager, ex-Developer Available for Product Owner roles
11
Mar
2008

what happened to my tweets?

The dark bit of sky in this blog’s header contains a simple SWF generated from pure AS3 that uses the Twitter API to collect and display my history of twitter messages. Unfortunately there is now a cross-domain policy file preventing any SWF other than those hosted actually from the twitter.com domain from accessing the feed. Apparently due to a security issue. The current suggested work-around is for me to write a proxy php script to sit on my own server to relay the feed request. Which I might do if I can be arsed, but I’m feeling grumpy today so I’m more likely to abandon Twitter all together – not that I ever over used it.

Twitter development talk on google groups has a thread that reveals some of the thinking going into solving the issue.

Posted by creacog in Flash Platform, Flex, twitter, 0 comments
26
Feb
2008

thanks again for more poker

Thanks to Sean for organising a second poker tournament and thanks to Adobe for sponsoring it once more. Last time I was a loser. Last night however I did a tad better. Still feeling a quite pleased with myself and slightly guilty for beating some far more seasoned players to get to the final table, then to be knocked out of the last six by the guy who went on to win the whole thing.

winner

Posted by creacog in Adobe, 1 comment
25
Feb
2008

DragManager workaround in final Flex3/AIR1

With today’s availability of release versions of Flex 3 and AIR 1, I’ve finally had a chance to apply the DragManager workaround that I had a moan about last month.

The flex documentation presents three configuration options for DragManager in AIR projects…

[Extract]

  1. Your main application file uses the <mx:Application> tag. In this scenario, you use the Flex drag-and-drop manager, and cannot drag and drop items from outside of AIR.
  2. Your main application file uses the <mx:WindowedApplication> tag. In this scenario, you use the AIR drag-and-drop manager, and can drag and drop items from outside of AIR.
  3. Your main application file uses the <mx:Application> tag, but loads the AIR drag-and-drop manager as represented by the mx.managers.NativeDragManagerImpl class. In this scenario, you use the AIR drag-and-drop manager, and can drag and drop items from outside of AIR.

Sounds all well and good. Except to use <mx:Application> within AIR, you lose functionality. For instance in my case while the window was re-sizeable, the content remained at the default size. What I really need is to use <mx:WindowedApplication>, but with the Flex DragDrop manager. A scenario not represented in the documentation.

Fortunately the workaround with files described in bug SDK-13983 so-far appears to work. However it is worth noting that in using it, a number of mxml tags change their namespace from mx to comps. In my case this affects

  • <mx:states>
  • <mx:transitions>

which then become

  • <comps:states>
  • <comps:transitions>

Possibly my reliance on this approach is due to the now legacy nature of the project – it was written in advance of the Apollo 1 alpha. However apart from this issue, very little has had to be re-written through the beta cycle of AIR.

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, AIR, Flex, Flex 3, Flex Builder, 2 comments
21
Feb
2008

A flurry of events : Adobe/Flash/Flex

A busy few weeks starting tonight:

  1. [Thurs 21-Feb-2008] LFPUG – Thermo Special presentation from Adobe
  2. [Mon 25-Feb-2008] Adobe sponsored Pokercoder Tournament II  – you need to be a professional user of Adobe products to join in
  3. [Thurs 28-Feb-2008] LFPUG – presentations on ‘Successful Flash Games’ and ‘Practical Particle Effects with Flint’
  4. [Wed 5th March] FLUG – Beer, presentations and chat about Flex
Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, AIR, CS3, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Flash Platform, Flex, Flex 2, Flex 3, Flex Builder, 0 comments
27
Jan
2008

losing access to Gemini

Slightly off-topic for this site, but I am constantly amazed by the UK Government’s ability to waste money within it’s own operations and withdraw comparatively small amounts from really useful projects thus crippling them and the benefits about to be reaped from the investments so-far made. The UK’s funding cut is about to exclude us from the multinational Gemini project as reported on the bbc news site. This I think is particularly short-sighted (excuse the pun) and it feels like the rug being pulled from under us. Particularly after projects such as Galaxy Zoo have done such a good job of increasing awareness and participation in this science.

If you are UK based and wish to stand against this decision, there is a Downing Street petition you can sign. There is more information and more actions you can take on the save astronomy site.

Save Astronomy

The Gemini UK office home page.

Posted by creacog in Science, 0 comments
24
Jan
2008

bitten by the beta 3 DragManager Bug

I’ve just found myself caught out by this bug (SDK-13983) in Beta 3 (released December 2007), and the quite substantial change in behaviour.

My application which is only a prototype – but quite heavy, was essentially built from Oct 2006 through to April 2007 and  worked happily in Apollo and in all AIR and Flex 3 releases since, until Beta 3, when the DragManagers of AIR and FLEX implementations diverged. The API remains pretty much the same, but the behaviour is quite different (documented here), and while my existing code compiles, it generates run-time error “ArgumentError: Error #2004: One of the parameters is invalid.” if the user dare drag my UI components, rendering it useless.

That it has been accepted as a bug and a fix/workaround created, and that that is visible in the public bug system is a good thing. It removes a lot of potential worry. That the fix is not available to the public (AFAIK we’ve had our last public beta before the final release) isn’t great for me as I am now in a catch 22.

  • The fix isn’t available to me until the final version is released.
  • I can’t continue to use my application compiled against Beta 2 as the install process for AIR currently demands Beta 3 of AIR
  • Beta 3 AIR  demands Flex Beta 3 SDK.

It’s late, so this is going on hold until morning, at which point I need to assess the impact and time required to make the changes to adopt the AIR drag-and-drop manager, or hold on until I can force the switch to the Flex drag-and drop manager when the final release is available. Or beg Adobe for access to a build later than 191577.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, Flex, Flex 3, 1 comment
21
Jan
2008

more capacity for this week’s FLUG

This week it is a biggie with contributions from Adobe’s Serge Jespers and James Ward presenting Flex 3 AIR and Vega.

The event had reached capacity but with a new venue organised and more capacity, if you couldn’t sign-up over the last couple of weeks, you now have another opportunity.

Flex London User Group (FLUG) 

Posted by creacog in Adobe, Flex, User Groups, 0 comments
04
Jan
2008

LFPUG off to a flying start to 2008

Again it looks like a couple of really interesting subjects on 31 Jan:

  • PureMVC
  • The 3rd Way: Handling 3D on the Web

More information is on the LFPUG site

I looked at using PureMVC previously for a simple tennis game, but left it aside in favour of building MVCish classes independent of any ‘framework’. I look forward to seeing if this decision saved or cost me time.

I haven’t got around to the obligatory 3D stuff yet. Personally I’ve always found it a bit of a red-herring, and one where the cost:benefit often falls short. So I’ll be particularly interested in seeing examples of good use.

Posted by creacog in 3d, ActionScript, Adobe, Flash Platform, User Groups, 0 comments
14
Dec
2007

Flex Builder 3 beta 3 – install gripe

So, the installation instructions quite clearly warn not to install this version over a previous beta. But then they include instructions how to “When using Flex Builder 3 Beta 3 with a workspace from a previous beta, please clean and reinitialize the workspace.”.

Unfortunately for me this didn’t work. I’d fully uninstalled the previous beta. But when attempting to re-use the existing workspace even with the ‘clean’ steps undertaken, the result was a broken installation of the builder. It couldn’t find any of the SDKs.

Uninstalling, getting rid of the old workspace and reinstalling then worked. Just leaving the job of manually setting up the projects again. This might be due to my configuration – I don’t keep project source files in the workspace – it only contains paths to the respective project folders on my system.

On a more positive note, the whole thing feels a bit more spritely.

Update: Actually, it is less of an issue to import projects than I first thought. In my first attempt I set my project folder and left the Project location at the default. This replicated the project files into the workspace folder. Not what I wanted. The solution, if slightly counter-intuitive, is to set the import from and the project location folder paths to be exactly the same path. This correctly makes Flex aware of the project , while leaving the files where they should be.

Flex project import

After the import – a quick clean then we are off!

Posted by creacog in Flex, 0 comments
13
Dec
2007

Three is the magic number at Adobe

Just as I’m about to head into hibernation for a week or so without computers or any connectivity, Adobe go and release all these goodies. Something to look forward to on my return…

  • AMF3 Specification
  • Blaze DS – Free LGPL Remoting and Messaging for Java (ok not three, but free!)
  • Flex 3 Beta3
  • AIR Beta 3

A good start-point to read more (a brief paragraph on each) is Ted’s OnFlex blog, and of course the Adobe labs site.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, AIR, Flex, Flex 3, 0 comments