Fix Debugging Flash Crash Issue in FireFox 3.6

Read a thread today, found out a reference about how to fix issue of debugging crash in FireFox 3.6. This problem has been there for while, I haven't think about this is a updating issue.
Fix is simple:
Enter "about:config" in address bar;
Find preference of "dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs" and change the value you want. "-1" value will turn it off and is best option for me without timeout.
The reference is here:
Fix FireFox Plugin Container Crash When Debugging Flash

Cairngorm 3 and Parsley in Flex

Past a couple of years, I involved a few projects using Flex tech. we had some problems in my team when developing enterprise project. One is the code maintenance. As the project grows, AS commands, servce controls and UI mxml always involved together and hard to decouple. The other is unit test. The Flex is a very powerful event driven framework. However, when I wrote the unit test for a particular part of code, it because very hard to handle when the data is ready cause I don't know when the event will be triggered to generate the data required for unit tests if testing part involving UI operations.
Starting this year, we introduce Cairngorm 3 framework guideline and Parsley injection framework library. These techs hopefully help us to address the issue. MVC is a long existing framework, which decouple commands, views and controls. The idea of Cairngorm guideline is a implementation of decoupling in Flex. The Parsley lib is a popular IoC framework lib to use.
The resources I found are very useful:

1. Adobe Cairngorm Home
   The first place you should go.
2. Parsley lib Home
   Where you can find the guide to using Parsley and it's API.
3. Arturo Alvarado's Quick Dive into Parsley
   A very good step-by-step guide to know about Parsley.

Unlike Cairngorm 2, Cairngorm 3 is a general guideline with a couple of helpful libs to develop Flex project. I hope there's no much obstacle to use the framework for my project.

"Hello World" App of Flex+Google App Engine+BlazeDS

I've been long time to look some way to develop my sample server host app without a penny.
I registered Google App Engine and Google Site a few years ago, but they both has some limits to start building a site.
Today, after I read this post, I think I may start to build a Flex site, which I can use Flex, Messaging Server and Data Communication Objects. Let's see when I will have my first app posted.

Flint Particle System - Cool Flex Effects

Flint Particle System is a very cool open-source library to add effects in Flash. It can be added in AS, Flash or Flex project. The site also provide many example to get started.

Flare - Flex Data Visualization and Interaction

When I'm developing my project about complex reference data nodes which have multiple levels of inheritance and connections, I only foundmark-shepherd.com SpringGraph close to my components. Then I extend that with a few modification. However, there are still some lack of features to satisfy my components.
Today, I read the The Flare Visualization Toolkit from Thomas Burleson. This kit is more organize-chart like and has a few more features I need. It's open source as well(Important!! ^_^).
Don't have time to read all code today, but I think it could be a resource of my project.

Flex DataGridColumn Percentage By Decimals

It's so surprised to find out a long waited feature in DataGrid and AdvancedDataGrid when I read this post.
Percentage of column width setting is just sit there but undocumented.
It is very simple to use ".25" instead of "25%" in the property of Width value.
But if you set columns to resizable, then it may resize wider when you resize a column.

Flex Component: Simple Resizable TitleWindow

There's a post on Thunderhead Explorer for simple implementation of re-sizable TitleWindow popup.
The link is Yet Another Resizable TitleWindow.

A list resources from Flex team's blog:

Blogs from the source

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of blogs maintained by engineers on the Flex, Flash Builder, and Catalyst teams. You'll find plenty of examples, tutorials, tips and tricks, and discussion on new features available in our betas.

(in no particular order :) they're all awesome)

Flex team:

Matt Chotin's Blog

Flex Examples - numerous Flex examples

Flexophile

flexreport - a discussion of the less intuitive aspects of Flex components and applications

Pete's Blog

Daniel Koestler - AIR, Flex, Flash, and other Adobe technology

Peter deHaan - Confessions of a Flex QA

Hans Muller's Flex Blog - a technical blog about the Flex 4 (Gumbo) API (stay tuned for posts about new Flex support for scrolling and layout virtualization)

Flex Butterflies and Bugs - Flex news, workarounds for bugs and solutions for common problems, from a quality perspective

Codependent - graphics and animation with Flex and the Flash platform

Frish's blog - Flex 4 (Gumbo)

iamdeepa on flex

Flexponential - DataGroup, List, virtualization, Flex Component Kit, and more

Quietly Scheming - examples and custom components

Evtimmy - custom layouts

Alex's Flex Closet - examples and discussion of common problems, especially around memory management and item renderers

Tips and Tools of Flex - tools in the Flex SDK

Flex Spaghetti - code samples, tips, and a couple ramblings about the Flex bug database

Just Suppose - UI, Flex, and Flash

Flash Builder team:

Getting and Setting - Builder coding features like refactoring and code generation

mikemo - Builder debugger

Tim Buntel's Web Log - Flex particularly relating to the ColdFusion

Flex Thoughts - Flex charts, general IDE features and DCD (Data Centric Development) features of Builder

Marking Occurrences - Flash Builder language intelligence features such as Find References

Radhakrishna's blog

Flex Automation - Automation of Flex apps

A Flex Enthusiast!

Flex Guard - Builder DCD for LCDS and BlazeDS servers, using Profiler and Network Monitor features of Builder 4

My Take On Tech - DMV Charts and more to come on PHP workflow (DCRAD)

Exploring Flex - DCD workflow of Builder - details of the wizards that form DCD

Sujit Reddy G – The Evangelist - DCD features in Builder

The GLog (Geek bLOG) - Flash Builder, Eclipse and Java

Catalyst team:

much ado about something - Flex/AIR/Flash Catalyst

draw background for DataGrid columns

When I read Peter Ent's post about "Coloring the Background of Cells", I need to fill the column in my project, which is programmatically generated, with gradient background fill.
I didn't finish my job at the first try. After I read the post again, I found each column has to be assign a backgroundColor style before DataGrid drawColumnBackground function taking effect.
This function "drawColumnBackground" is called by drawLinesAndColumnBackgrounds function, which is called in updateDisplayList function. So I think I can update each column background by override the updateDisplayList function. I probabely need to update datagrid data as well as column background based on user action.

Reading for Custom Flex Preloader

I've read Ted's Flex 2 Preloader before I implemented a preloader class in my project.
However this class seems not working as I expected. Loading is quite glitch. I found in the code there is time interval to check status and display preloader, which slow down the process of loading animation.
After a couple of months, I retrieve this problem and found some new entries explained in detail how the preloading proceed and which class is not good to be used in preloader class.

• Flex 3 Pleloading Explained is new and has upcoming post(not posted yet) to explain the preloading in Flex;
• Custom Flex 3 Lightweight Preloader gives a very good example to build an preloader;
• Implementing A Flex 2 Custom Preloader has one Class from basic implementation of IPreloaderDisplay which is simple and detail explained.

I hope I can try to redo this preloader next week for my project.

Flex memory leaks and garbage collection

I read a series of blogs talking about memory leak and garbage collection in Flex.
It's very good resource to gain the knowledge about garbage collection in Flex.
Here is the post and following the other 4 posts from We are the heroes of Web 2.0

Good ItemRederer Article

I was used to use itemRenderer to render Datagrid and List, but most case I have to set function or event happened in Renderer and goes to it's owner to get actual action. After I saw this article, it is very good to dynamic load itemRenderer at run time. It also set function as renderer's property then. I can write function directly in the class rather than in renderer to do the job without getting the data from the owner or parent level.

The blog "Example of Feature Rich Dynamic Item Renderers in Flex 3" is from Themorphic Group.

There are also a series of articles from Peter Ent's Blog talking about itemRenderer.

Quick Note: Custom Binding in Flex

Read this Custom Binding Released! from http://www.xtyler.com/, which claims light and simple.
It also support 2-way binding, which Adobe Flex should support for binding.

Quick Note: FlowContainer

I found a couple of customized flow container in Flex. I can invest them later when my projects need.

• Flow Container @ App Division
• Flex FlowBox Container @ Tony Fendall’s Flex Blog
• 
  

Auto Complete Input Resources

There are a couple of customized components available, such as

• Adobe Exchange
• Kuwamoto
• Flex AutoComplete: Version 0.98.1 at Hillel Coren

The last one from Hillel Coren seems very nice and suitable for my project.

Input with PopUp or PopUpInput

I recently has to use a pop-up input, which behavior similar to PopUpButton. But PopUpButton name is not editable. ComboBox has the simliar thing but popup do not support UIComponent. So I create a new custom component called PopUpInput. It has the following features:

• popup can be any UIComponent;
• because of TextInput, name is editable;
• customized drop-down arrow icon;
• can extend the function to save the input text to list.

Click here for demo and source file.
However, this an alpha version of this component, some filters such as drop shadow applied on popup do not transform smoothly as same as popup itself. Also, popup does not do drop down effect when the first time is opened. Let's call it version 0.1. I will update it later as I finish my Java study.

Icons, Fonts download and Flex SkinTutorials collection

some resources for design skins and icons.

100000+ Free Fonts For Skins and Themes
A list of free font download site.

480+ free icon sets to create skins and themes in Flex
A list of free icon set collection for download

15+ Tutorials for Creating Skins and Themes in Flex
A list of tutorial collection of Flex skin and themes.

SpringGraph

In my recent project, I was asked to develop an component in Flex to represent hierarchical relationship of each item. It has interactive ability to display drill in relationship of items.
The component should have filter which can opt user defined key attributes or properties as well as search box. I also think it should have an bread-thumb trail like navigation to go back to the original place.
I found a good example from Flokoon ( www.flokoon.com).
Then there is an impressive sample with code from Mark Shepherd
The component is here which has docs to expain package.
The drawback is the component is Flex 2 what I believe.

Quick Note: Custom String Validator

got a source from Adobe cookbook:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/communityengine/index.cfm?event=showdetails&productId=2&postId=9603

I will check back later when I get some spare time to view this validator.

Flex Component: Gauge

A few examples of Gauge Component.

Gauges Flex 2 Components by Peter Ent
Very simple and detail explanation to using only Flex class to create components.
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/pent/archives/2006/07/writing_flex_2.cfm

--------------------------------------
Using Degrafa by Thomas Gonzalez
V.02 version add the Degrafa graphic Classes to draw skin for components.
More flexible and polished.

Gauge Component v.02
http://form-function.blogspot.com/2008/04/gauge-component-v02.html
Gauge Component v.01 - Flex
http://form-function.blogspot.com/2008/03/gauge-component-v01.html