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Psyked *

it’s easy once you know how.

Link: Flex AutoComplete component

Posted by James - 11/01/10 at 03:01:20 pm

If you’re ever looking for an autocompletion component in the Flex framework, I’d strongly suggest you check this one out: http://hillelcoren.com/flex-autocomplete/ Quite simply it’s awesome, it’s fully featured and packs a helluva lot of options into such a small package.

I swapped an old ComoBox component for it just now, and it worked fantastically with no additional configuration.

Check out the demo for it here: http://web.me.com/hillelcoren/Site/Demo.html

Link: Advanced PDF eSeminar for ActionScript developers

Posted by Mark - 07/12/09 at 09:12:46 am

“In short, you can build a GUI in Flex to skin the PDF and how the user can access the document contents. The PDF can contain images, text docs, or any Flex/Flash content (such as a video player or game). The Flex navigators are the GUI for how the user accesses the content of the PDF.”

Sound interesting? Check out more at http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2009/11/11/pdf-for-flex-devs

Automating tasks in Flex Builder, with the help of a little something called ‘ANT’.

Posted by James - 04/12/09 at 10:12:57 am

One of the great things about Flex Builder is that it’s developed on top of the already existing Eclipse IDE, and is itself just one of many uses the Eclipse project is put to.  Which means that many of the things you may want to do in your projects have already been explored by others.  One such thing is automated tasks.

Turns out there’s something called ANT, which “[... does a really good job at building things]“.  As Eclipse is the basis for Flex Builder, a lot of the plugins for Eclipse – and all the variants of it – work just fine in Flex Builder.  There’s a plugin for Eclipse which adds ANT support for example, and then further plugins which add even more task types to ANT, such as FTP support.
Continue reading Automating tasks in Flex Builder, with the help of a little something called ‘ANT’….

Link: Form Validation in Flex

Posted by James - 27/11/09 at 09:11:15 am

This sounds like a cool AS3/Flex library to try out for the next time you need to validate forms and data in Flex.  It’s an AS3 port of a Java library, supposedly geared towards unit testing, but also happens to be very good for form validation, as Joel Hooks points out in this article;

http://www.insideria.com/2009/11/validation-in-flex-with-hamcre.html

Embossed / Shadowed text in Flex

Posted by James - 09/11/09 at 09:11:38 am

If you get it right, drop shadow effects can really improve the appearance and clarity of text.  Mark sent me the starting code for this a little gem a while ago, but I’ve extended it to support Flexs’ CSS Styles support, and have been playing with different settings, which – with a bit of creativity – will give you anything from drop shadows to a bevelled appearance.

There are 4 classes we’ve created which are extensions to 4 basic Flex components – ShadowButton, ShadowLabel, ShadowText and ShadowText.  To each you can customise the shadows’ distance, angle, colour, alpha and blur amount.  Here’s some examples of the usage, and output of these classes;

Bevelled text:

ShadowLabel, ShadowButton, ShadowText, ShadowCheckBox
{
shadowColor: #ffffff;
} 

Drop shadowed text:

ShadowLabel, ShadowButton, ShadowText, ShadowCheckBox
{
shadowColor: #333333;
}

Continue reading Embossed / Shadowed text in Flex…

Getting FTP access in Flex Builder…

Posted by James - 14/10/09 at 10:10:41 am

Little nugget of discovery for today;

If like me, you hate having to open a separate FTP program to upload projects to a remote server you can install an FTP plugin for Eclipse, aka Flex Builder.  It’s not easy as pie to configure and it’s not so good with copying large volumes of files or folders, but it’s perfectly capable of uploading files to the server without having to leave your development environment.  I haven’t found a way of setting projects up to publish to a remote server yet, but at least it bypasses opening that separate program.

Here’s a little link that tells you how to install, configure and use the plugin: http://www.venukb.com/2007/06/06/how-to-browse-remote-files-in-eclipse-ide/

Link: Comparing files in Flex Builder

Posted by James - 07/10/09 at 10:10:38 pm

Useful link I’ve come across today – http://undefined-type.com/2008/07/flex-builder-built-in-compare-tools/ – how to use the built-in Flex Builder / Eclipse compare tools.