Smashed Apples by Brian Holmes

I'm no Astraphysicist

I downloaded Astra today. This is about where my post should end. I may be missing the point, but other than the tree, i didn’t see anything that’s not included in the flex framework and definitely there wasn’t anything that improved on the framework. Well, maybe the autocomplete. The examples look like flash apps from 1984. I never like to be negative in my posts, I think that creating open source software is pretty scary, based off my experience with flexmdi I know that you open yourself up to a lot of criticism. It’s impossible to think of every use case scenario. I applaud them for continuing to be a presence with flash/flex. We need more big companies to get with it. I think that as an avid flex developer, I’d much rather see an open crossdomain.xml file and a supporting api that allowed flex devs to remote into Yahoo!. Now that would be cool.

 

 

Tags: Yahoo, Astra

Programmatically Open Tree Nodes

I posted this to flex coders and is often times the case, I didn’t really understand the problem I was asking to be solved. I asked how to execute a certain query and I got specific responses. But what I really needed was to open a specific node that contained a specific document.

Because the data is hierarchal and dynamic I couldn’t rely on knowing where the node would was that I needed to open. The solution turned out to be I needed to get all the nodes and then look at each one to see if contained the document I was looking for.

View Example

 

 

 

 

Tags: tree+control, xml, e4x

SprOUT

just heard about a new service called Sprout. I signed up and there was a notice that their servers were getting hammered and the service might not be able to handle everything for a few more days. There’s worse problems I think. Anyways, the site seems to respond just fine. It has rte’s popping up all over the place tho. That might be a problem to look into.

Tags: startups

Yes, I'll admit I flirted with yflexskin

I orignally picked it up here. It went into three or four demo apps and now suddenly I wake up this morning and I’m tossing it out. I’m desperately trying to figure out why. But it was one of the « look and feels » that just went stale fast. Not that the default flex skin isn’t stale at this point. So Yahoo! guys, thanks! It was a nice run of about 2 weeks.

Tags: scalenine, themes, yflexskin

Using Flex Module Optimization Bug?

If you are using modules and that special feature that says « optimize for {insert application } » and you decide to change the name of the application that your module is optimized for and actually take the time to do a rename your application file and then try to do a release build you’re bound to run into an error that says your application file that you’re trying to optimize for doesn’t exits. Because it doesn’t. You just renamed it. It seems looking at modules isn’t part of the painstaking long process that is renaming a file in flex. No worries tho, just go to your project properties and edit your modules.

Which reminds me, there needs to be a way to rename a file without going through the refactor. It takes so long to load the first time I almost always just create a new file and then delete my old file instead of using the rename.

Tags: modules, optimization

eBay Widget Contest

Doug blogged about this and I have to say that I actually have a pretty slick idea to build for the eBay widget contest. However, after spending 10 minutes trying to get in the contest I don’t know if 10g’s would even be worth it. It’s not the ten minutes, it’s the fact that you have to become an eBay developer, which means filling out countless forms and every where I look there’s a notices I’m not certified, I’m not an affiliate, I haven’t done a compatible check ( as if we’re dating ) and there seems to always be another form to fill out. I just filled out a form to get into the developer program, why do I have to fill out another one with the same info to get into the contest?

 If you’re gonna have a contest make it as easy as possible. Perhaps that’s what they did and I’m just a little too impatient tonight. Anyways, I will probably give it another shot tomorrow. If I find the time.

Tags: eBay+Widget+Contest