AIR, Flex / Flash, FMS, PushButton, Game… Developer
Flex
Tip of the Day – AS3 Language Reference for your iPhone
Jan 27th
Today was my first real day as Senior Adobe Developer for T-Mobile… and to be completely honest with you guys… I’m completely exhausted and uninspired at the moment
So… with an honest intent to keep up my 30 day tips streak… I’m going to tell you to check out Mike Chambers’ new iPhone application. It may seem silly, but I find having the AS3 Language Reference on my phone incredibly useful at times. For example, when I’m flying, when I have no internet connectivity, or when I’m out at lunch and am trying to brainstorm a solution.
Learn more about AS3 API Reference iPhone application.
*Nate passes out*
Submit your Tip & Win a copy of Balsamiq Mockups
Jan 25th
After yesterdays tip, I’ve been emailing a bit with Peldi, founder of Balsamiq. He’s a really cool guy, and he has granted me 1 license of Balsamiq Mockups to give away.
So now is your chance to get a free copy of Balsamiq Mockups (a $79 value). All you have to do is submit a tip. It can be about anything… Flash, Flex, ActionScript, ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby on Rails, .NET, Papervision3d, graphic design… you name it. Best submission will win a free copy of Balsamiq Mockups.
You may submit as many tips as you’d like (to better your chances). Submissions will be closed and a winner selected on Sunday, February 1st 2009.
Good Luck!
Tip of the Day – Mocking up your application / website
Jan 24th
If you’re not sure what a mockup (or wireframe) is… it is a basic UI design of an application or website.
Here is an example mockup:
And now it’s actual implementation:
For a long time, I used Adobe Photoshop for all of my mocking up needs. However, last week that changed. Now my weapon of choice is Balsamiq Mockups. This handy little tool has pretty much all of the Flex components, and allows you to quickly put together a blue print of your application.
I also need to mention that when creating mockups, don’t go too elaborate with graphics. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I spend hours thinking about and creating a mockup, only to have the graphical elements picked apart by the client, “I don’t like the colors” or “What is this Lipsum crap?”.
The “napkin drawing” (or coaster drawing if you’re a big drinker) approach is the best route to take, because it forces the clients to pay attention to what elements are there, and not what they look like.
Balsamiq Mockups… best $79 I’ve ever spent.
Tip of the Day – Learn Object-Oriented Programming
Jan 23rd
Object-Oriented Programming is the staple of the entire Flex Framework. Some key concepts you need to know to be taken seriously as a developer are encapsulation, polymorphism and inheritance.
I’m not going to do a full OOP write-up today in a tip, but I am going to share with you how I learned Object-Oriented Programming.
A while back I was browsing Barnes and Noble, looking through the Web Development section, when I came across a book titled Object-Oriented ActionScript For Flash 8. Now at the time, I had decent understanding of OOP, but wasn’t really using it much within my Flash Projects. So I bought it, and was glad I did.
Going back and looking at the code in some of my old projects, I sometimes don’t know what I was thinking… or I realize how I could have much better programmed the solution.
Anyways, if OOP is something you’re interested in (which it should be), I highly recommend picking up Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0.
Also, DevArticles.com has this post dealing specifically with OOP in ActionScript, if you’re too cheap to pick up a book.
Tip of the Day – Flex Builder Tips… The Flex Show style
Jan 21st
Today Jeffry Houser posted another excellent “Fifteen Minutes With Flex” video podcast. This one is titled “Episode 15: Flex Builder Tips”.
Jeff goes in depth about all the really cool shortcuts within Flex Builder and Eclipse.
It’s a must see in my opinion. He has some tips in there that I didn’t know about, such as “Working sets”.
Great work Jeff!
Tip of the Day – Compile your AIR Applications for Flash Player 10
Jan 20th
I was playing with Cocomo today and hit a wall dealing with the Flash Player 10 version of Cocomo.swc while using Adobe AIR. I created a new AIR application in Flex Builder 3, and pointed it to the Flex SDK 3.2. I then linked in the FP10 version of Cocomo.swc. Everything was going fine until I tried to run my application and it threw “Error #1065: Variable SoundCodec is not defined.”
After doing a bit of research, I learned this error occurs when trying to run Flash Player 10 code in the Flash Player 9 runtime. I thought Flex Builder would handle this for me automatically when I pointed it to the 3.2 SDK.
So here is the fix and your tip for the day.
Within Flex Builder:
- Select your AIR application in the Flex navigator
- From the menu choose, Project > Properties
- Choose “Flex Compiler”
- Add “-target-player=10″ to your Additional compiler arguments
- Click OK
This isn’t limited to Adobe AIR, you can set the target player of your Flex applications as well.
