Web Development Central

Creating Custom Components with MXML

2008-02-11T19:16:00.000-05:00

When you start building applications in Flex, it won't take you long to find that you need to build your own components. Flex makes this process relatively painless. Here is how you can create your own components in a few easy steps.Usually, when you're building your own components in MXML, you start off by extending an existing component. As an example, let's create a customized menu bar

Using Favicons

2008-01-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

Most web sites (or web pages) have an associated icon. Called a 'Favicon' (short for 'favorites icon'), browsers display this icon in the address bar, along with your tab (if you are using a browser with a multi-tab interface) and in your favorites (or bookmarks) list.Invented by Microsoft, Internet Explorer would make automatic requests for this 16x16 graphic called favicon.ico in your web

Building An AS3 Project Without MXML

2007-12-30T20:07:00.000-05:00

Usually you'll find yourself using MXML to quickly build Flash applications. There are times, however, when you really just want to work with the underlying ActionScript and not use MXML at all. Here's how.The best way to do this is to subclass the Sprite class. So you would create a class that looks something like the following:package{ import flash.display.Sprite; class TestApp extends Sprite

An Overview of Acid2

2007-12-27T18:48:00.000-05:00

Acid2 is a test case designed by the Web Standards Project to identify web page rendering flaws in browsers and authoring tools. We'll take a brief look at the standards-based test.In 1998, a grass roots coalition of web designers started the Web Standards Project. According to their web site, "The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of

Using Variable Length Arguments With ActionScript

2007-12-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

There are times when you simply don't know how many arguments a function will be receiving. Some languages handle this sort of problem with function (or method) overloading-defining a function multiple times with each function definition containing a different number (or type) of parameters. With ActionScript, you can code one function that can dynamically handle different function definitions.

Client Side Cookie Handling

2007-12-22T08:04:00.000-05:00

There are many times that you'll need to handle cookies on the client (i.e. the web browser). Here's how you can use some simple JavaScript to provide all the cookie manipulation you'll ever need.A Cookie OverviewYou're probably pretty familiar with cookies, but in case you aren't, cookies are essentially pieces of data that are sent back and forth between your browser and a web server; usually

Introducing Caitlyn Ferris!

2007-10-16T15:08:00.000-04:00

It isn't too often that I use this space for anything personal-but I'm definitely making an exception.I'm happy to announce the birth of my daughter, Caitlyn Mai Ferris on October 1st at 2:30 AM!!! Caitlyn and mom are doing fine! Pictures can be found at the website above.

Aye Laddie, It's Cairngorm!

2007-07-02T09:37:00.000-04:00

Cairngorm may be a mountain in Scotland, but its also an architectural framework for Flex from Adobe. Cairngorm is based on the MVC model and is especially concerned with data synchronization between client and server.A few months ago I was lucky enough to sit in on a presentation held by the New York Flex User's Group on Cairngorm. My friend, Kevin Pechin, has written a review of the meeting,

Using Variable Length Arguments With JavaScript

2007-06-13T15:13:00.000-04:00

There are times when you simply don't know how many arguments a function will be receiving. Some languages handle this sort of problem with function (or method) overloading-defining a function multiple times with each function definition containing a different number (or type) of parameters. With JavaScript, you can code one function that can dynamically handle different function definitions.

Introduction to AJAX

2007-06-12T19:44:00.000-04:00

AJAX is an essential tool in any web developer's toolbox. We'll take a quick look at the history of the technology, and how you can use it in your web applications.The computer industry thrives on acronyms. AJAX is no exception. Short for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, AJAX has actually existed in one form or another for nearly a decade, although it's only seen a surge in popularity for the

XML: A Basic Overview

2007-06-11T13:49:00.000-04:00

We'll take a basic overview of the language that's increasingly powering the Internet: XML.XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, and was standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium, who were obviously poor spellers. XML is a language that is mostly used to transfer data between systems. Since XML is a markup language, if you've seen HTML, XML will look familiar. It uses tags(elements) with

Building Windows Classic Menus in Flex

2007-05-22T20:33:00.000-04:00

Looking to give your Flex based applications a more native look and feel? To that end we'll show you how to go about creating 'windows classic' menus.First, let’s examine how menus work in Flex. We’ll create a simple menu using the mx:MenuBar component. Then we'll move on to styling it to match the 'windows classic' skin. Lastly, we'll inject some ActionScript code to fix some deficiencies in the

It's the End of Luminis As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

2007-03-27T15:28:00.000-04:00

Prior to Summit, on the eve of the release of Luminis IV, there were rumors spreading that Luminis' future as a portal built on a uPortal architecture was seriously in doubt. The rumors indicated that Luminis was going to undergo a radical transformation and be rebuilt on Oracle portal.At the UDC kickoff session at Summit, this seemed to be confirmed; Brian Maddox, Sungard CEO, announced that

The Future of ComCenter

2007-03-25T22:02:00.000-04:00

I've released the first .5 versions of ComCenter to both RiaForge.org and osflash.org. Halfway to 1.0, this seems to be a good time to consider where ComCenter is and where its going.For starters, the release schedule is going to slow down slightly-the first 5 point releases were completed in less than two months. As the code gets more complex, and more complicated features get added, I can't see

Flex Image Viewer: ComCenter 0.5

2007-02-24T08:56:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the release of ComCenter 0.5. ComCenter 0.5 features the ability to zoom in on images, basic help, the ability to print images, some basic search capabilities, and the ability to paginate the thumbnails display.Once you have brought up the image in the image window, clicking on it will increase the zoom and ctrl-click will zoom out. There is some basic help text included

Flex Menus In Context

2007-02-21T09:45:00.000-05:00

There's one point in the Flex livedocs language reference on Context Menus that reads:"In Flex, only top-level components in the application can have context menus. For example, if a DataGrid control is a child of a TabNavigator or VBox container, the DataGrid control cannot have its own context menu."Then how would you give sub-components their own context menu?The way to do this is to track

Is E4X Strong Enough to Obviate the Need for an Object Layer?

2007-02-11T11:04:00.000-05:00

In many applications, a common task is to load data as XML, and then translate this into 'objects' that are used by the program. You can see this kind of behavior in ComCenter, but I've also used it in many programs that use XML over the years.Part of the reason I've done this is because using standard XML access methods whether it be through SAX, DOM, or some other method was awkward-it was much

ComCenter Demo

2007-02-04T09:37:00.000-05:00

I'm keeping this blog entry to contain the current demo of ComCenter:document.getElementById('sidebar-wrapper').display = "none";

Flex Image Viewer: ComCenter 0.4

2007-01-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the release of ComCenter 0.4. ComCenter 0.4 features the ability to rotate thumbnails (so you can align them to their proper orientation), a slightly more native look, and each thumbnail shows a placeholder until its ready for display. There were a couple of other miscellaneous changes as well. You can now associate an event (such as "Our Florida Vacation", or "Uncle Joe's

Flex Image Viewer: ComCenter 0.3

2007-01-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the release of ComCenter 0.3. ComCenter 0.3 features an improved layout, the ability to set a description or caption for each image, and the ability to alter the thumbnail dimensions. ComCenter can be downloaded here. A demo of it can be found here. There were a couple of other miscellaneous changes as well (for example, the image properties window now displays the image

Building An Image Viewer in Flex: Part 2

2007-01-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

The last time, we saw how to build a very simple image viewer in Flex. But the code we developed(outside of the 'About' window) was the bare minimum to get something like this working. In this article we'll flush it out a bit more and walk through some of the code in ComCenter 0.2.First of all, the code that was developed wasn't that flexible. Images were actually embedded in the swf. This was

Flex Image Viewer: ComCenter 0.2

2007-01-05T07:26:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the release of ComCenter 0.2. This is a Flex image viewer I had been working on while learning Flex. ComCenter 0.2 features basic keyboard control and the ability to associate properties with each image. Images are now loaded externally. ComCenter can be downloaded here. A demo of it can be found here. Needless to say, this is only a 0.2 release so there is a long way to

Flex Image Viewer: ComCenter 0.1

2007-01-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, I had posted about an image viewer I had written in Flex. Last month I set up a project and posted the code on osflash.org. There's not much there at the moment(outside of the original code), but I'll be making updates soon.

Open Source Rules

2006-11-29T21:22:00.000-05:00

A couple of major developments have occurred during the past few weeks in the world of open source.First, Adobe has open sourced portions of the Flash player. Specifically, they've donated the ActionScript 3.0 virtual machine to the Mozilla Foundation. Now listed as Project Tamarin, the foundation intends to use the code to accelerate JavaScript. Since ActionScript and JavaScript are based on the

Building An Image Viewer in Flex

2006-11-21T09:55:00.000-05:00

One of my earliest experiments in Flex was to build a simple image viewer. The image viewer would display a series of thumbnails that would give you the full image when it was clicked on.Building something like this in Flex takes all of two seconds. Here's how. We'll create a sample application called ComCenter.General LayoutFirst we start off with an mx:Application tag. This is usually the first