The property ‘htmlText’ is gone in spark TextArea. It was obviously making life too easy

A work around is to use the spark.utils.TextFlowUtil and shove the html code in it. It formats it for TextArea to display.

This example goes a step further and shows how to add more to an existing TextArea with HTML in it.

// Required: spark.utils.TextFlowUtil
// output is a <s:TextArea />

output.textFlow = TextFlowUtil.importFromString(output.text + htmlSourceToAdd + "<br />");

arno.org has a great article on how to reduce the CPU usage in your air apps. The meat of it is essentially not using ENTER_FRAME (duh), and more interestingly dropping the framerate to once every 10 seconds (0.1) once the air application goes in the background (minimized/hidden).

Read the full article at arno.org

Here is a great concept for a CAPTCHA.

The ROTCAPTCHA (PDF, 1.4MB).

It’s a CAPTCHA based on image orientation.

The ROTCAPTCHA system requires users to adjust randomly rotated images to their upright position. This is a task most people will be familiar with given the state of early digital cameras, etc.

This system has many advantages, such as being language independent and support many input sources.

JSWOOF is a pretty neat JSON parser. It’s lightweight and about a third faster than the corelib JSON encoder/decoder.

Here is a great little site I stumbled upon today.

It’s called java2s and it’s basically example source code (snippets) of many languages, organized by topic.

Here is the Flex / Flash / Actionscript category.

Do you know other ones (categorized)? If so, let us know.

Before, I wrote about How to save one or more objects to file using this class.

Today it’s time to read it and bring back the object in Flex.

The class

package com.idletogether
{
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.filesystem.*;

	public class Opener
	{
		public static var file:File;

		public static function openFile() :void
		{
			file = new File();
			file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, dirSelected);
			file.browseForOpen('');
		}

		public static function dirSelected(e:Event) :void
		{
			// this will be our object back
			var dat:Object = new Object();

			var fileStream:FileStream = new FileStream();
			fileStream.open(file, FileMode.READ);
			dat = fileStream.readObject();
			fileStream.close();

			some.object = dat.data;
			some.other.object = dat.structure;
		}

	}
}

How to use it

Simply…

import com.idletogether.Opener;
Opener.openFile();

This example is very basic, but it is kept simple for the sake of being easy to understand. From there you can build up a much more tailored system. This should get you started.

Use the Expressions panel of Flex and add a ‘watch’ to the variable ‘dat’ to see what came back in and if it is in good form.

HTH,
Cheers.

The class

Feel free to use it for free or commercial projects.

package com.idletogether
{
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.filesystem.*;

	public class Saver
	{
		public static var file:File;

		public static function saveToFile() :void
		{
			// pick an unused extension
			file = new File("/filename.ext");
			file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, dirSelected);
			file.browseForSave('');
		}

		public static function dirSelected(e:Event) :void
		{
			// this object will get saved to the file
			var dat:Object = new Object();

			dat.data = some.object;
			dat.structure = some.other.object;

			var fileStream:FileStream = new FileStream();
			fileStream.open(file, FileMode.WRITE);
			fileStream.writeObject(dat);
			fileStream.close();
		}
	}
}

How to use it

It’s a static method to be called so, simply…

import com.idletogether.Saver;
Saver.saveToFile();

This will prompt the user to pick a destination and will suggest the file name “filename.ext”.

Please note that you can’t save DisplayObjects straight to file using writeObject. It’s a limitation.

From here, find out how to get the object back into flex in the next post.

HTH,
Cheers.

A quick and easy one but I always end up looking for it and not finding it easy.

<mx:DropShadowFilter id="dropShaText" distance="1" angle="45" blurX="0" blurY="0" alpha="1" color="0x111111" />
<mx:Label text="Hello world" filters="{[dropShaText]}" />

Just a quick personal update. I’m in the process of going Freelance in Adelaide for Flash development and Flex development.

If you need or know someone who needs a senior Flash/Flex/AIR developer with experience, please don’t hesitate to forward my details.

I’m open for freelance and contract work, remotely or on location anywhere in Australia.

I’ve been developing and designing websites and web applications since the late 90ies and I’ve been full-time Flash-ist for 6 years. I started as a Web Designer. With experience on both sides, I manage my time efficiently and take care of a project from specifications to deployment.

Cheers
Nicolas

Today Adobe announced the launch of the Adobe Air Market Place. It’s a new website supposed to help the promotion of Adobe Air applications and to highlight them for sale.

It’s not an Apple app store, for sure, but it should help promote your Air applications out there.

Spatialkey let’s you overlay data on a map. Really cool.

When you program features for (web) application, it’s often useful & good practice to allow users shortcuts for common actions.

This easy snippets shows how to capture ‘new’ or Control+N or Command+N on the Mac.

stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, keyDown);

private function keyDown(e:KeyboardEvent) :void
{
        if(e.commandKey || e.ctrlKey)
        {
                switch(e.keyCode)
                {
                        case Keyboard.N:
                                // do stuff
                        break;
                }
        }

}

The submit button is enabled/disabled automatically based on the form elements’ validations.

The form

<mx:Form x="0" y="90" width="100%" height="100%" id="form1" creationComplete="resetForm()">
	<mx:FormItem label="Email" width="100%">
		<mx:TextInput width="100%" id="txtEmail" change="validateUs()" />
	</mx:FormItem>
	<mx:FormItem label="Password" width="100%">
		<mx:TextInput width="100%" id="txtPassword" displayAsPassword="true" change="validateUs()"/>
	</mx:FormItem>
	<mx:FormItem width="100%">
		<mx:Button id="btnLogin" label="Login" width="85" height="25" click="loginUser()" />
	</mx:FormItem>
</mx:Form>

The validators

<mx:EmailValidator id="val1" source="{txtEmail}" property="text" required="true" />
<mx:StringValidator id="val2" source="{txtPassword}" property="text" required="true" minLength="2" />

The script

private function resetForm() :void
{
	btnLogin.enabled = false;
}
private function validateUs() :void
{
	btnLogin.enabled = (Validator.validateAll([val1,val2]).length == 0);
}

UPDATE: turns out that doesn’t always work. the autoSize property is not reliable at all…

This, should do!

var ta_height:uint = 25;

field.validateNow();

for(var i:int=0; i < field .mx_internal::getTextField().numLines; i++) {
	ta_height += field.mx_internal::getTextField().getLineMetrics(i).height;
}

derivedHeight = ta_height;

Thanks Vaan.

Original post:

Adobe’s dodgy textHeight sure doesn’t do the trick. I end up getting a textfield of 2000px height while it clearly looks like 300 tops.

This, however, works.

the code

private function resizeMe(field:TextArea) :void
{
	field.validateNow();
	field.mx_internal::getTextField().autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
	field.height = field.mx_internal::getTextField().height;
}

Just use that on your TextArea or Text component:

creationComplete="resizeMe(this.myTextAreaInstance)"

Thanks to Vaan for some insight about the mx_internal::getTextField().

This works:

@font-face
{
	src: url("assets/FontReg.ttf");
	fontFamily: FontReg;
	fontWeight: normal;
	fontStyle: normal;
}

@font-face
{
	src: url("assets/FontMed.ttf");
	fontFamily: FontMed;
	fontWeight: normal;
	fontStyle: normal;
}

This won’t work properly (all ends BOLD):

@font-face {
	src: url("assets/FontReg.ttf");
	fontFamily: FontReg;
	fontWeight: normal;
	fontStyle: normal;
}

@font-face {
	src: url("assets/FontMed.ttf");
	fontFamily: FontMed;
	fontWeight: normal;
	fontStyle: normal;
}

Yeah. Not much to add. I believe it has to do with the way the flex compiler parses the style code.

Flokoon is a visual search engine that uses last.fm api. It’s in french.

Pretty cool. Not too sure about the use of it though.

This is one of the coolest Papervision 3D experiment I have seen.

The screenshots don’t really do it any justice. It has to be animated to really get the cool effect.

Check it out here.

More information can be found in this blogpost.

This is an early beta of a new Yahoo! service called Y! Live.

Yahoo live lets user create their own channel and be live on video I guess. It’s cool and all but frankly I wouldn’t do it. Some You Tube freaks might be craving for it tho, time will tell.

This early beta craps itself all the time. The app looks promising although unclear as to what it’s trying to achieve.

Check out Yahoo! Live.

Love the holycow (url) error.

Design:
Usability:
Execution:
Overall:

Yahoo Finance has a new charting app in beta. It’s not too bad if you love charts, but still pretty useless being delayed by 15 min; unless you’re into the long term trends.

Design:
Usability:
Execution:
Overall:

Besides the buggy deep linking in their flash, it’s a very well done web app.

Update: it’s a Flash app, excuse the title.

Henley Properties display homes

Design:
Usability:
Execution:
Overall: