Archive for November, 2006
This news announcement sparks a lot of questions in my mind.
YouTube moves to the small screen
First off its a little confusing because it says,
Users who subscribe to Verizon’s Vcast service will be able to view content on the YouTube website via their mobiles.
and then states this,
The new deal will mean that VCast users, who pay $15 a month to watch and download video to their mobile, will have access to a limited number of approved videos from YouTube.
How do you go from saying that the Vcast service will be able to view content on the YouTube website and then say they will have access to a limited number of approved videos? First off, the YouTube.com website is a Flash/FLV based media player and Vcast is a Mpeg4 based service, would be interesting to know how they implemented that one. I assume this might be some of the reason for limited number of approved videos? because converting FLV to other formats right now is not something of a smooth process. But we are talking about going from a larger resolution to a smaller one so even if you are going from a compressed format to another you will be alright. Most YouTube.com movies are compressed alot though so I wonder if they are limiting it to videos they have the source to?
Well like I said this new article sparked more questions then answers. It was nice to see that they hooked up a 5-digit code to send videos to for uploading videos. This should make the expansion of social-video-networking go up quite a bit. It would be really cool, this is way out there, to have this fuel Verizon’s relationship with Adobe and push the Vcast system to use FLV (and Flash Lite 2.X/3.0???) instead of or in addition to the Mpeg4 based service of right now. Anything that pushes Flash forward on the mobile device arena is cool.
November 28th, 2006
In the days of Flex 2 beta there were some mx.automation.* classes that was the start of integrating Flex 2 with Mercury Quick Test Professional (QTP). These classes where pulled out of the Flex 2 release. At MAX I attended Alistair McLeod’s presentation on “Increasing Efficiency and Quality with Flex Automation” and found out that the mx.automation.* classes will make it into Flex 2.0.1.
A good resource on this subject is a presentation made by Ram. K back in June 2006 called “Automated testing of Flex applications”. In this document there is a diagram on page 5 that shows a Testing Tool API box with Adapters inside it.
I am interested in how people are using QTP adapter and if there are plans for any other custom adapters (I have my own ideas in this area). If you are using QTP adapter or have more information about custom adapters please leave a comment or email at renaun renaun com.
November 27th, 2006
You can close a project in Eclipse which keeps a reference to the project but does not load the project. This keeps the Flex Builder memory usage and build times down a little if you are working in a lot of projects at one time.
From the Flex Builder help docs:
Closing and opening projects
To save memory and improve build time without deleting a project, you can close it. When you close a project, you collapse the project and its resources while keeping a reference to it in the Navigator view. A closed project requires less memory than an open project, and is excluded from builds.
To do this select the Project in the Navigator view, then right click and click on Close Project.
With a current state of 34 projects in my Flex Builder workspace the difference in startup memory usage was about 11Mb all closed to 18Mb all open. Not terrible alot of very bit counts, also this would be much higher if I had kept many files from those projects open in the Editor view. Eclipse loads each project that has a present file in the Editor view when loaded. With two files from two different projects of my 34 projects open when Eclipse is started caused it to start at 40Mb memory usage. Granted you need to use memory when you working on projects, but using the close project feature can help you manage what Projects and resources you are using more easily.
November 21st, 2006
The ability to repeat an image across the X or Y axis is not straight forward in Flex/Flash.is not built into the Flex Framework. This Flex component extends SWFLoader and provides two properties “repeatX” and “repeatY”, which both control which axis to repeat the image is repeated on. The underlying code uses the BitmapFill class (thx to Alex for the tip) to draw the bitmap data onto a Sprite that fills up the SWFLoader’s container’s width and height.
To view the component in action click here!
Click here for the component’s home page and a link to the source.
November 21st, 2006
Christophe Coenraets did a Flex and IFrame example a while back. His code was before Flex 2 was release and it was never updated. I have updated the code, in connection with my last post about Flex Search mashup.
Here is the original post/code:
http://coenraets.com/viewarticle.jsp?articleId=95
You can find the newer IFrame at
http://renaun.com/flex2/posts/flexsearch/index.html
I had to change the normal Flex 1.5 to Flex 2 release stuff, like V(v)oid and property compiler error fixes. But the way the class talks to JavaScript was a little more, I changed out the getURL method of talking to JS and used the newer ExternalInterface. It was quite simply and a lot cleaner way of talking the JS on the page, that ends up talking to the IFrame.
I also added two bindable properties to the class, globalX and globalY. I used this to put buttons around the x,y of the IFrame. This is because the IFrame sits on top of the Flex app so you can’t put buttons on top of the IFrame but you can position them close by so I needed the coords.
Well have fun and enjoy.
PS: I was informed that Brian Deitte had done a port already, well now there are two they came out about the same so thats a good thing.
http://www.deitte.com/IFrameDemo3/srcview/index.html
November 16th, 2006
I decided to create a mashup on top of the new Flex Search that just came out.
Background, Ted Patrick just released the Flex Search Alpha1 API. He created a basic application on top of the remoting API. The Flex Search API has the following current features:
- Search Flexcoders, FlexComponents, Flex Dev Center, Flex Documentation, AS3 Documentation and soon blog posts on flex.
- Boolean Search syntax:
Cairngorm –> Search for Cairngorm
+Cairngorm -flexcoders –> Require ‘Cairngorm’, remove ‘flexcoders’
flash.net.* –> Wildcards supported
- AMF Remoting API with server caching logic. Only unique requests hit the database as a search. 2nd request is cached. Also when the index is rebuilt, the URL’s can be replayed caching prior content.
- Search reporting and metrics for tuning. All searches are stored.
You can find more on Ted’s site here.
What I decided to do was make my own mashup using the Flex Search API. The application was a created pretty quickly so let me know if there are any issues. It lets search and browse the pages through an iFrame on top of the search results.
Here is the live example.
Right click to view the source or get it here.
Related Link: Contact People People Search and Contact Tools
November 16th, 2006
Another small fix for the AdvancedForm component. This time it has to do with the initial snapshot the AdvacnedForm component makes. I originally was making this on the childrenCreated() method of the component but this doesn’t take into the account when children of the Form are created. Thanks again to Dustin for pointing out the scenario.
Get the updated component
http://renaun.com/blog/flex-components/comp-advancedform
or on Adobe Exchange
November 15th, 2006
So what is this post all about. Well its about how to view the whole execution stack line by line when creating a Panel object. I have been learning about the Debugger in Flex Builder 2 and had a strange thought while stepping through a bug I was trying to fix. That thought was caused by the fact that the act of stepping into code in Flex Builder 2 takes you through all the Flex Frameworks classes as well (well at least the ones in the source).
What this means is you can see what and when things are created and called when you try and create a new Panel class. Think of the other things you can learn about, how event’s bubble, how a components are created, how a popup works, etc…
Just having the idea was not enough, I went ahead and screen captured the whole debug step into process for creating a Panel class. The file is 2 minutes and 13 seconds long and is viewable here.
The video shows the Debug view and the MXML/AS editor view. As you step into each line of code you will see the Debug view change the execution stack change according to what class you are in. You will also see a new MXML/AS editor tab open with the current class in it. It will take you through each line of code that is executed.
November 15th, 2006
Now I am from Vegas and have seen the MGM Grand web site for a while now. I believe its one of the greatest examples of Flash Video, Flash, and HTML. The experience and the navigation all comes together really nicely.
Edge newsletter “The edge of Flash”
Here is the site it self MGM Grand
November 15th, 2006
There was a little bug that affected the AdvancedForm’s isValid property for a certain condition. Thanks to Dustin for finding the bug. I have updated the component to fix the bug. The situation arose when you reset a form after the isValid = true, the reset changes isValid to false but then would set isValid = true after the first validator became valid. It should not do this unless all validators on the page are valid.
Get the updated component
http://renaun.com/blog/flex-components/comp-advancedform
or on Adobe Exchange
November 14th, 2006
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