FlexSkinning: Skinning and Styling of Flex Components

This is start of new serie on my blog Franto.com. In latest Flex and AIR projects I’ve used lot of custom skinning and styling of original and custom Flex components and I’ve found it very easy. But also there are some curious exceptions and other stuff I like to share with you in this new serie. So if you want know about some tips & tricks about Flex Skinning & Styling, please follow this serie.

AIR Tip: Flash movie is not rendered in AIR 1.5 HTML in Fullscreen

This is long title, but it can tells everything. I came up interesting issue. I do not know if you have already played with new AIR 1.5. We need some new features, so we have used it. And found interesting issue. If you are using HTML compoment and want to load HTML pages with Flash content inside it works in normal mode. But if your application is in Fullscreen, Flash movies are not loaded. In context menu (right click) there is just written Movie is not loaded… If i press Esc and go away from Fullscreen mode, Flash is loaded and all works correctly. Hmmm, strange. Does anyone experience same problem? Can someone from Adobe tell me anything about this.

Sorry, if I can’t see anything obvious…

I hope this will help to anyone…

If you are interested in similar Flex / AIR / Flash Tips & Tricks, consider subscribe to my Franto.com Tips & Tricks.

ATTENTION!

Tyler pointed me to the Marc’s Musings Blog, where Marc Hughes has experienced same problems, and it is confirmed by Adobe AIR Engineers, that this is bug. It’s already submitted in Adobe Bug tracking system.

Here are Marc’s posts:

• AIR Full screen & hosted swf content in HTML control
• Confirmation from Adobe AIR Engineers, that’s the bug

Wallpaper for you – Watter Lilly

This is old wallpaper, my first one. I’m in state or organizing my wallpapers and this watter lilly wallpaper has not its own post, so I have create one. In its origin post Wallpaper for you there are now all wallpapers. Download Watter Lilly Wallpaper and use as your desktop wallpaper.

Become Webmaster

Lately, I’m learning stuff about internet marketing in my spare time. I want to try generate some money from own products, so I think it’s useful to learn such things. I was lucky to find Josh Spaulding blog about online money and internet marketing. Then I’ve joined his Internet Marketing Coaching Forum and this was real great deal. I will tell you why. It is just forum, where Josh answer questions of his members. Someone can tell it’s not Coaching, I think it is. I’ve learned a lot, made friends there and help people as well with technical stuff. Because there are writers, and mainly not Webmasters. And each of them has at least 1 site. As time goes by and there are many questions about technical parts like WordPress, HTML, PHP, CSS and many others I’ve decided to make similar coaching forum as Josh did, but for technical questions. I’ve called it Become The Webmaster Coaching with Franto and now I’m offering this coaching for all of my readers and subscribers as well. And I really appreciate to have you, my readers, I’ve created discount for you: 30% discount to Become The Webmaster Coaching with Franto for lifetime. I’ve prepared more detailed page about Become The Webmaster Coaching with Franto, where you can read about what you can get for your money. If you have any question, please ask here in comments or in my Contact Page as always.

Discount code for my readers for 30% discount (each month): E603FD548E

So it is just $21 / month for my visitors

But wait, if you want this Coaching for free, it’s easy. I have prepared private affiliate program for my coaching members. So you can even pay less or earn money from this coaching. And it’s not just for signup, you will earn money for each month your referral stay singuped. It’s just up to you. Remember 5 referral, and your coaching is for free. Bring just 1 more referral and you will earn money.

I’m looking forward to help you becoming The Webmaster.

AIR Tip: ContextMenuItem can crash AIR app on Windows

This is just quick tip for all AIR developers. If you are developing AIR application and you want to use ContextMenu please be aware of possible problem on Windows platform. This is not problem on Mac, and it’s not problem in Flash Player (even on Windows). It is problem just in AIR on Windows (at least what I have find out till now).

Problem is as follow:

You want to have ContextMenu for some of your item (right click menu). You have created ContextMenu and want to add ContextMenuItem in this way

var myItem:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem(myItemName);

if variable myItemName is initialized or at least is empty string, all is ok. But there can situations when it is null. For example when you want to support multilanguage with ResourceManager, so it’s not correctly fill up and it’s null. In that case you AIR will crash and you will not know why, because it’s works on Mac, it works in FlashPlayer (without AIR), it just doesn work in AIR on Windows platform

So my quick fix was create fix function, like this

private function fixEmptyString(val:String):String
{
	if (val == null)
		return '';
 
	return val;
}
 
var myItem:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem(fixEmptyString(myItemName));

This will for sure.

Hope this helps you.

P.S. I will post this and another useful AIR tips in my Franto.com Tips & Tricks, so do not wait and subscribe to my list, if you find AIR tip this useful…

Wallpaper for you – Orchid Dream

Wallpaper for you collection has new wallpaper called Orchid Dream. It is mix of our orchid with blurred images of other orchids. In Photoshop you can do what you want

Here is link for Orchid Dream Wallpaper, download it to your desktop and use it. If you want to use it on your site, please link back to this site (http://www.franto.com) and do not modify wallpaper.

Let me know if you like Rose Autumn Wallpaper. If you want to have double screen wallpaper from this piece let me know your ideas.

I have uploaded this wallpaper to

Smashing Wallpapers

Wallpaper for you – Rose Autumn

I have created new autumn wallpaper for you. Photo was taken by my wife Zuzka and I have added little photoshop work. We called the wallpaper Rose Autumn

So if you like Rose Autumn, download it to your desktop and use it. If you want to use it on your site, please link back to this site (http://www.franto.com) and do not modify wallpaper.

We like the colors of autumn on wallpaper Let us know if you like Rose Autumn Wallpaper. If you want to have double screen wallpaper from this piece let me know your ideas.

FlexTip: Add Thumbs to Mx:Slider programatically

I have some new Flex Tip for you. Maybe you have found it already if you have tried add new thumbs to Mx:Slider (HSlider, VSlider) programatically. There can be various “small” problems. Or maybe there is just another way

What I’ve tried is increase thumbCount property and add new value to values property. But there can be problems, if you did not set snapInterval property or how you insert new value.

I have created examples with 3 different ways of adding new thumbs to the horizontal slider. There can be more, but I want to show you just these 3 different way of how to do it.

In all examples sliders starting value as follows:

• minimum = 0
• maximum = 0
• thumbCount = 2
• values = [0,1]

I’m catching MouseEvent.CLICK event on these sliders, and add new thumb. After click you can check last added value, and values property of each slider for you control, what’s inside. Let’s try example and after I will explain difference in these 3 different ways fo adding new thumb to slider.

The first example I’m adding new value to the values property, which is Array by simple slider.values.push(newValue). Problem is that, when you push value e.g. 0.5 to array [0,1], values will be [0,1,0.5] it’s not sorted (slider has not sorted it by itself). It’s interesting how slider recompute it’s values. Just try it in example

private function handleAddWrongPoint(e:MouseEvent):void
{
	var newValue:Number = idWrongSlider.minimum + (e.localX / idWrongSlider.width) * (idWrongSlider.maximum - idWrongSlider.minimum);
	newValue = int(newValue * 100)/100;
	if (!(e.target is SliderThumb))
	{
		latestWrong = newValue;
		idWrongSlider.thumbCount++;
		idWrongSlider.values.push(newValue);
		idWrongSlider.invalidateProperties();
		trace('Wrong: ' + e.localX + " , new: " + newValue + " values: " + idWrongSlider.values);
 
		update();
	}
}

In second example there is no snapInterval set, and it seems, that causes more interesting problems. Values are now greater than maximum (1), try add few thumbs by clicking on 2nd slider and you can end up with such values property [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,0.6]. Really don’t why

private function handleAddWrongPoint2(e:MouseEvent):void
{
	var newValue:Number = idWrongSlider2.minimum + (e.localX / idWrongSlider2.width) * (idWrongSlider2.maximum - idWrongSlider2.minimum);
	newValue = int(newValue * 100)/100;
	if (!(e.target is SliderThumb))
	{
		latestWrong2 = newValue;
		idWrongSlider2.thumbCount++;
		idWrongSlider2.values.push(newValue);
		idWrongSlider2.invalidateProperties();
		trace('Wrong: ' + e.localX + " , new: " + newValue + " values: " + idWrongSlider2.values);
 
		update();
	}
}

In 3rd examples all is ok, because I’ve set snapInterval property to 0.01 and I’m adding new values correctly sorted

private function handleAddCorrectPoint(e:MouseEvent):void
{
    var newValue:Number = idCorrectSlider.minimum + (e.localX / idCorrectSlider.width) * (idCorrectSlider.maximum - idCorrectSlider.minimum);
    newValue = int(newValue * 100)/100;
    if (!(e.target is SliderThumb))
    {
        latestCorrect = newValue;
        idCorrectSlider.thumbCount++;
        var arr:Array = idCorrectSlider.values;
        arr.push(newValue);
        idCorrectSlider.values = arr.sort();
        idCorrectSlider.invalidateProperties();
 
        trace('Correct: ' + e.localX + " , new: " + newValue + " values: " + idCorrectSlider.values);
        update();
    }
}

Full source to this examples is included in Download Section (you will see it just as subscribed member) of our Coaching Program Forum on Flexets.com (My own company).

AS3.0 KeyboardEvent WooDoo

WTF? I don’t know what’s wrong, and if this is a bug or anything, but I came across interesting issue. Let me first tell, that it seems it’s bug on Windows, or maybe just my Windows really do not know, I need you to help me. I need your test to let me find out what is the problem, because it seems that it works on my friend’ Mac. I’ve tried Flash Player 9.0.115 and 9.0.124.

Problems is in getting KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN for multiple keys. I’m working on some sport game in AS3 and I need to check for key kombination like Right Arrow + Down Arrow + Space, but it’s never fired up on my Windows. I thought it’s some logic what’s wrong in my game, so I’ve created simple pure AS3 example and there is problem as well. There is strange Woodoo, some combinations work, some do not I really do not see the logic. Here is example, just press and multiple Arrows and Space in same time. You can try simple key strokes, you will see red keys when key is pressed (KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN was received). When you release key, it just come back to its grey state. So please play and let me know your results. I need to know OS, Player version (included in example) and if you have same problems as me, or what does not work for you. (Click to movie, to gain focus)

And here is my Woodoo, I simply can not do this combinations

• SPACE + LEFT ARROW + UP ARROW
• SPACE + LEFT ARROW + DOWN ARROW
• SPACE + RIGHT ARROW + DOWN ARROW
• SPACE + RIGHT ARROW + UP ARROW – ATTENTION!!! I can do this combination

Next example, press and hold SPACE + LEFT ARROW, now press DOWN ARROW, KEY_DOWN event is not fired, just release SPACE while DONW ARROW is still pressed, and now KEY_DOWN event for DOWN ARROW is fired up. WTF ?

Please can you confirm my Woodoo. I need to find out, if this is Flash Player Bug, or maybe something else? Please post your result to comments. Thank you.

If you want stay updated with result or similar tips & tricks, or any other stuff I think it’s interested and important, please consider subscribe to my Franto.com Tips & Tricks.

Adobe CS4 Info Collection

I’ve put my new collection as I used to do, but now I’ve created in on my new site Smashing Collection. It is at the start so there are just 2 collections right now. Best Collection of Twitter clients, services, plugins and related websites and Adobe CS4 Information Collection

I hope all my visitors and subscribers know Adobe has announced new products line: Adobe Creative Suite 4. There is lot of buzz around the net, many articles already written about news, what’s inside, different news, even information about Geographical pricing for CS4, so I’ve put all useful info together and have created

Adobe CS4 Information Collection

There are more then 50 links about Adobe CS4 products, CS4 Products Feature Tours, Videos from Adobe TV, YouTube and different thoughts on CS4 products from community. So check Adobe CS4 Information Collection and let me know if I forgot anything.