March 2nd, 2008
Hi,
Currently I am working on a quite big project strongly based on mapping as one of the main features. As map engine I have decided to choose young Yahoo Maps Flash API due to its Flash origin and specification.
The Yahoo maps API itself is rather easy and nice to use, therefore I'm pleased with my choice 
I have written some useful and reusable wrap-ups for its classes to use in Flex directly as MXML components (not a big deal - just some updateDisplayList, some styling, easy adding Markers and stuff like that - but you won't have to work on it once again). I am planning to open special page on my page for the code that you might need to use. When I finish the project itself (give me couple of days), I will comeback to this idea.
Hope that you'll find it useful.
Best regards,
W.
wjptak |
Flex, Libraries |
February 27th, 2008
Howdy,
February was quite a busy month when it comes to presentations, workshops and meetings. You could met me:
- 13 - 15 February 2008 - Oslo, presentations and short workshops related to RIA business opportunities (presentation for sales people, designers, interaction designers - for better understanding what's happening nowadays) and introductions to Adobe Cairngorm microarchitecture.
- 19 February 2008 - Cracow, internal Making Waves Academy, presentation related to mentioned RIA opportunities, mainly addressed to .NET developers.
March probably will be even more busy, for sure you'll be able to meet me at:
- 1st March 2008 - Cracow, official 2nd meeting of Adobe Flex User Group. I am pleased of possibility of presenting introduction of Adobe Cairngorm (and comparing it to Pure MVC).
(date unknown yet) - Oslo, 2-3 days workshops of: general approach when creating basic architecture draft, thinking with UML in Flex projects, transforming those thoughts into Cairngorm parts and finally creating full Cairngorm code of the application.
Furthermore I was asked by Pawel Cichon to involve in creating Flex community aroud Flextech.pl, which is great idea indeed due to fatal knowledge of Flex environment in Poland. We are really facing Microsoft offensive at Polish universities, which are "producing" extreme numbers of .Net developers while loosing focus on other promising (Flex, Ruby) or well known and proofed technologies (Java). Therefore the more buzz we generate - the better. Still - Polish universities were always known for high quality of scholarship and eruditeness while training engineers
Best regards and see you on the meetings
W.
wjptak |
Flex, Meetings, Workshops |
February 25th, 2008
Hi all,
I don't want to be just another enthusiastic developer opening champagne today. Basically - it's great news for Flex community that finally we have stable and official release of Flex 3.0 and AIR 1.0.
I have used them commercially for the very first time in September 2007, since than I made couple of projects for my clients using these environments. They're great, they allows us to do almost magical stuff however beta versions were full of bugs that couple of times really delayed my work while trying to find workaround. Some features were missing (like File.browseForSave file type filtering), some stuff seemed to be unfinished. Due to this fact I found it really hard to convince project managers and sales guys to go for it. Thanks god, there are some with widely opened eyes, that's how Vattenfall Energy Calculator or Statoil Hydro News Aggregator were made.
Therefore my first thoughts today are - I really hope Flex is now mature environment without time-and-effort-wasting bugs.
Now, excuse me but I need to sign for my own version of Flex Builder
Cheers,
W.
ps. I must admit that pricing for the Flex environment is now really promising. It means for community that it will grow faster now due to many reasons including greater availability for bigger companies and on the other hand even for freelancers or due to fact of opening the framework.
wjptak |
Flex |
February 23rd, 2008
It's just another ordinary day
Cheers!!!
W.
wjptak |
Uncategorized |
February 21st, 2008
There is a bug in Flex 3 beta 3 (mine is build 3.0.190133 using MB Pro with OSX Leopard) while trying to create AIR icons for delivered app. You get error "Error creating AIR file: 303: ERROR...".
First, you provide Flex compiler with requested data in your *-app.xml file, just as usual:
<icon>
<image16x16>assets/icons/icon_16.png</image16x16>
<image32x32>assets/icons/icon_32.png</image32x32>
<image48x48>assets/icons/icon_48.png</image48x48>
<image128x128>assets/icons/icon_128.png</image128x128>
</icon>
The bug is being reproduced if you have unchecked "Copy non-embedded files to output folder" option in Flex Compiler settings. I have tried to workaround it by copying needed files to "bin-debug" folder, trying to change path etc. All failed.
The only working workaround is to check again "Copy non-embedded files to output folder" and recompile your application once again. That's pity, because I really like to have my projects clean. Hope that Adobe will work on buggy editions of Flex Builder...
Added:
I have found this bug in official Flex Bug list:
When you uncheck "Copy non-embedded files to output folder" you can no longer compile your air app with custom icons...
wjptak |
Bugs, Flex |
February 6th, 2008
I believe that those links are worth mentioning, RIA & Flex communities:
Some other very interesting links:
I believe that list of other links, strongly related to the Flex and Actionscript 3, will be also helpful. Please, give me some time to choose some from my bookmarks
Have a great coding today!!
Best regards,
Wojciech Ptak,
RIA consultant & Flex developer
wjptak |
Flex |
