Table of contents for flex-tips

1. FlexTips
2. FlexTip: mx:Text vs. mx:TextArea
3. FlexTip: XMLSocket connect() after disconnect from server
4. FlexTip: Problem with masks and scalable Flash
5. FlexTips: How to add Bitmap to UIComponent
6. FlexTip – Stop displaying Focus
7. FlexTip: Preventing CheckBox selection with Key.SPACE
8. FlexTip: WordWrap for mx:Text
9. FlexTip: Add Thumbs to Mx:Slider programatically
10. AS3 Conditional Breakpoint – enterDebugger()

I have to confess I didn’t know about great function enterDebugger() in flash.debugger package. If you ever want to have conditional breakpoint you can do it programatically. Just add this statement to your code and debuger will stop as it there would be normal breakpoint. So you can use it in IF statement and call it just when some conditions are met. I think I will use this function a lot from now on

Enjoy

Yesterday, I’ve posted about interesting AS3 Class InteractivePNG, and now I’m adding new addition for solving other problem with transparent Bitmaps. If you have transparent bitmap with whitespace around image and you want to crop whitespace around “real” image, you can use this function…

public static function getBitmapCroppedOutWhitespace(bd:BitmapData):Bitmap
{
	var bmd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(bd.width, bd.height, true, 0x00000000);
	bmd.draw(bd);
 
	var rect:Rectangle = bmd.getColorBoundsRect(0xFFFFFF, 0x00000000, false);
	var bmd2:BitmapData = new BitmapData(rect.width, rect.height, true, 0x00000000);
	bmd2.draw(bmd, new Matrix(1,0,0,1, -rect.x, -rect.y));
 
	var bmp:Bitmap = new Bitmap(bmd2);
 
	return bmp;
}

From BitmapData it creates Bitmap without whitespace. It will find whitespace automaticaly and removes it. If you want to insert Bitmap data instead of BitmapData, just edit this function slightly. This is just idea how to do such cropping. Enjoy, I hope it will be useful for someone.

If you want make just pure AS3.0 project, not Flex project, there is problem with Tween. Adobe has not included Tween to pure AS3.0 project, it’s included in Flex framework library (at least I don’t know something). So you have few possibilites how to use Tween in your project. By including Flex framework library, make your own Tween Class, or use any already built framework, packages which has custom Tween class inside.

Let me know, how you are using Tween in your AS3.0 projects, maybe you will help someone.

Here is list of already build Tween classes for you (I will update it, when someone point out new class):

• http://code.google.com/p/tweener/