Modified Adobe AutoComplete Input Example

I went ahead and downloaded the newly created AutoComplete Input component from Adobe.com Flex exchange. This component will be one of many to come from the Adobe’s Flex Team.

There are a couple included examples which where very easy to follow. In my example I’ll show how to use the AutoComplete Input component to search and filter the data in a DataGrid. The combination of the AutoComplete Input component and the DataGrid provides a nice little search feel affect. You can see it in action here. Source is included by right clicking on the SWF.

Here is a screenshot of the example:

I put the countries into an ArrayCollection instead of just an Array to allow the data providers to listen to changes. Then I bound the ArrayCollection to the AutoComplete Input component as well as the DataGrid’s dataprovider, this means with the AutoComplete filters the data provider the changes automatically show up in the DataGrid. I bound the label fields to the DataGrid if it was selected, nothing much to it.

16 comments September 28th, 2006

ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 hosting to work with Flex 2

I have not been following who is providing the latest ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 hosting, but its important if you are trying to use Flex 2’s RPC services.

I picked up a google news alert that says “CrystalTech Offering ColdFusion MX 7 Web Hosting With Adobe Flex 2″.

Continue Reading Add comment September 27th, 2006

The Power of a Flex Component market

There is true power in creating and extending Flex components.  As Flex progresses we’ll see more and more components.  The interesting thing is a lot of components are created for a specific need a developer has.  The slightly smaller set of components being made are ones that allow developers to create new components and applications more easily.

Creating components takes alot of engery and time, I know I have created a few myself which you can find by clicking on the components link up top.  There is alot of time spent making sure the code is solid as well as creating documentation and examples.  To be able to support the growth of good components there needs to be a commerical market for Flex components.

After reading some of Mike’s latest news on teotigraphix.com I am excited to see some progress in this area.  Currently Mike is offering two components, the CheckBoxTreeFX and the ResizeManagerFX.  The resize manager it self is crazy, check it out for your self with his component explorer appliaction.
To use it select one of the tabs on the right and then change the “clientOverlayAlpha” to 1 on the left.  You’ll see blue boxes around any of the components, the blue boxes allow you to resize the component.  There are animated effects on the resize and you custom overlay skins to just mention a few of the features.  This is really powerful and easy to use as all you have to do is add any child component that you want to resize into the ResizeManager.

Mike has also planned a RuleCanvas component, you can take a sneek peak at it here.

More and more components will become available for the Flex community that provide high quality experiences for the users and developers.

6 comments September 27th, 2006

Flex Performance Presentation by David George

There is a create Presentation on “Flex Performance & Tips” by David George at the link below.
http://adobedev.adobe.acrobat.com/p71169528/

The main areas of performance consideration for your Flex applications are Object creation, Measurement/layout and Rendering.  I found the object creation section to be the most helpful for my past experience but the whole presentation is worth viewing and reviewing for any heavy Flex developer.

2 comments September 26th, 2006

WebORB for PHP mod adding RemoteObject source attribute support

In my first attempt with WebORB for PHP I came across an issue that was not keen with the examples I was trying to use. The issue had to do with using the “source” attribute on the RemoteObject class. The reason behind the missing feature in WebORB for PHP was that they modeled their services config files after FDS, which is JavaAdapter based. My examples are based on ColdFusion and use the standard services-config.xml <source>*</source> attribute defined for the “ColdFusion” destination, which is created by the ColdFusion connectivity feature in 7.0.2.

Continue Reading 4 comments September 23rd, 2006

Flash Player Confusion, Flash or No Flash

The image should explain it all!  (I was just looking at the video a few page clicks before this came up)

Add comment September 15th, 2006

Google Finance is JavaScript and Flash, Adobe says so!

When Google introduced their new Finanace website a while back of course wanted to figure out what they where using.  I do my normal first test of using the right click button on the mouse to see if Flash comes up in the context menu.  Sure enough Flash is used on the charting part of the Google finance.

The more interesting part of this and why I bring it up is that Adobe actually acknowledges Google’s use of JavaScript and Flash in a technical document.

Also, because Flash Player is integrated with the browser runtime environment, developers can easily deliver applications that combine user interface logic written in JavaScript with components or entire applications written in Flex. For example, Google is taking advantage of both JavaScript
and Flash as part of its Google Finance site. As shown in Figure 12, the application uses common Ajax techniques to update news stories and highlight news items, while the interactive chart takes advantage of the Flash Player runtime to draw a rich data visualization and show the connections between breaking news and changing stock price.

Adobe® Flex™ 2 (page 18)
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/whitepapers/pdfs/flex2wp_technicaloverview.pdf

They go on to talk about the Flex-Ajax bridge (FA Bridge) but nothing concrete that Google is actually using FA Bridge.  Either way its nice to see high profile uses of Flash and JavaScript/AJAX being referred to in an Adobe’s technical white paper.

2 comments September 15th, 2006

Flex Features Marketing Material

After following the Flex 2 depoyment since the beging Alpha I kind of ignore marketing materials.  But today I found myself on Adobe’s site looking at the Flex product page.  Click on the “View the Flex Feature Tour” button found on most Flex product pages.

The presentation gives you an overview, popular case studies from SAP and Yahoo, and a bit about why its helpful to developers.

This is a nice quick marketing piece if you want to present the technology to business people not aware of Flex.

Add comment September 15th, 2006

MAXUP the unconference of MAX 2006

If you haven’t read other blog posts about MAXUP read Ted’s post here.

I found out there is more information located on barcamp.org wiki pages here.

“The Adobe MAX conference showcases Adobe software. MAXUP will allow designers and developers and to showcase their work created with Adobe tools in Barcamp format.”

The picture below is also sported on T-Shirts that will be given to those that present. So if you are giong to MAX this year, make sure to come by and join the MAXUP unconference.

Add comment September 14th, 2006

Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5.0 Preview

I have a Treo 700w and have been looking into Flash Players for the Window Mobile 5 OS since I got the phone. The PocketPC Flash Player 7 came out earlier this year and worked well with FLV's but not Flex (at least with Treo 700w small memory size).

Yesterday Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5.0 was annouced as a preview on Adobe labs site. I went ahead and downloaded the Flash Lite player, copied it over through ActiveSync and installed in on my Treo 700w. You then have to navigate to the Program Files/Adobe/FlashLite folder and click on saplaywm.exe file. This creates a License document that you need to open and read. The License document provides a url and a key to register your Flash Lite player to your phone. All a bunch of steps, it feels weird registering a Flash Player to a device.

Now I need some content to test things out, but I didn't know how to create it. I first opened my Treo 700w browser to see how it would handle regular Flash Player 7 SWF's (Note: I still have PocketPC Flash Player 7 on the phone). Well, it seems Flash Lite 2.1 installed over the PocketPC Flash Player 7 because when I went to a site with Flash Player 7 SWF's it gave me the below text in place of the SWF's.

"Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5 will support Flash 7 content authored for mobile devices only."

I went ahead and downloaded the Flash Lite update for Flash Professional 8. I downloaded and install the Flash Professional 8 updater and created a simple animation. I exported as Flash Lite 2.0 (no Flash Lite 2.1) and put it up on my server here. I fired up my Treo 700w and pointed to my test URL and to my disappointment I received the same message as above.

How do I create content for Flash Lite 2.1, that will work on Windows Mobile 5?

I see the Flash Lite 2.1 for BREW conversion kit stuff, but creating mobile content is a little confusing.

UPDATE:

The fix had to do with the HTML, this is what it is suppose to look like (note the different "classid"):

Thanks Vijayan

You can also find the Windows Mobile 5 Flash Lite 2.1 documentation on labs.adobe.com.

9 comments September 13th, 2006