I’ve run into a bug with the released version of the Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK. The 4.5 version of the SDK does not respect keeping [Embed] metadata in your SWF. This is problematic because we use this metadata extensively in PushButton Engine.

Take the following example into account:

TestMetadata.as

package
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.utils.describeType;
 
    public class TestMetadata extends Sprite
    {
        public function TestMetadata()
        {
            var typeInfo:XML = describeType(TestClassWithEmbed);
            trace(typeInfo);
        }
    }
}

TestClassWithEmbed.as

package
{
    public class TestClassWithEmbed
    {
        [Embed(source="assets/flip.png", mimeType="image/png" )]
        public var Flip:Class;
 
        [SomeMeta(source="assets/flip.png", mimeType="image/png")]
        public var Test:Class;
    }
}

In version 4.1 of the Adobe Flex SDK, we get the following back from describeType.

<variable name="Test" type="Class">
  <metadata name="SomeMeta">
    <arg key="source" value="assets/flip.png"/>
    <arg key="mimeType" value="image/png"/>
  </metadata>
  <metadata name="__go_to_definition_help">
    <arg key="file" value="/projects/zaalabs/workspace/TestMetadata/src/TestClassWithEmbed.as"/>
    <arg key="pos" value="243"/>
  </metadata>
</variable>
<variable name="Flip" type="Class">
  <metadata name="Embed">
    <arg key="source" value="assets/flip.png"/>
    <arg key="mimeType" value="image/png"/>
  </metadata>
  <metadata name="__go_to_definition_help">
    <arg key="file" value="/projects/zaalabs/workspace/TestMetadata/src/TestClassWithEmbed.as"/>
    <arg key="pos" value="136"/>
  </metadata>
</variable>

However, in version 4.5 of the Adobe Flex SDK, you can see the Embed metadata is being omitted. Same exact code, same compiler arguments, nothing has changed except the SDK.

<variable name="Test" type="Class">
  <metadata name="SomeMeta">
    <arg key="source" value="assets/flip.png"/>
    <arg key="mimeType" value="image/png"/>
  </metadata>
  <metadata name="__go_to_definition_help">
    <arg key="pos" value="243"/>
  </metadata>
</variable>
<variable name="Flip" type="Class">
  <metadata name="__go_to_definition_help">
    <arg key="pos" value="136"/>
  </metadata>
</variable>

As you can see, the Embed metadata is being stripped out, even though I explicitly set “–keep-as3-metadata+=Embed,SomeMeta” in the compiler. Since I don’t believe that the Adobe Flash Player team would break describeType in a minor release, I’m led to believe that this is a bug that was introduced in the 4.5 version of mxmlc in the Flex SDK.

Rant

:: UPDATE ::

This seems to have been an isolated incident on this specific day, bugs.adobe.com has worked well for me many times since then.

————————————————————————–

So I tried to do the “correct” thing and file this as a bug on bugs.adobe.com. And would happily do so if the site worked. In fact, in the time I’ve been waiting for bug.adobe.com to load and let me login… not only did I write the test case, but I wrote this entire blog post as well.

[UPDATE]
I was finally able to file the bug, I think… it won’t pull it up. SDK-30485.

10 minutes to diagnose the issue…
15 minutes to blog about it…
45 minutes… and counting to file a bug through the proper channels.

There is now an update for Flash Builder 4 which downloads and installs the Adobe Flex 4.1 SDK. According to Renaun Erickson’s post, Flex 4.1 includes Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.

Now, if you’re like me and loathe the Adobe Updater… then you probably turned off the Adobe Updater notifications.

So here’s how to update Flash Builder to version 4.0.1 which includes the 4.1 SDK.

Go to Help > Search for Flash Builder Updates…

This will launch the Adobe Application Manager and then proceed to update your software, including Flash Builder 4.

== UPDATE ==

Once the update is completed you can see Flash Builder is now at version 4.0.1.

And you now have the option for Flex 4.1 as an installed Flex SDK. You can use Flex 4.1 to develop against Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0.

This process has gotten much easier, you can now use software update to get AIR 2 as well as Flash Player 10.1 in Flash Builder… check out this post.

Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 were released on June 10th, 2010. It’s an exciting time. This weekend I decided to do some development on AIR 2 to try out some of the new features.

On the Adobe AIR Team blog’s post they mention that the free standalone download of the AIR 2 SDK will be available on Tuesday, June 15th… but I wanted to play with the SDK today.

So I went over to the Adobe AIR labs page and downloaded the AIR 2 Release Candidate SDK which is –> here.

You can download the released SDK from –> here

After downloading the Adobe AIR 2 SDK, I followed the directions on the release notes which explained how to overlay the AIR 2 SDK with my current version of Flex 4.

I’m on a mac, here are the commands I used in Terminal:

cd /Applications/Adobe\ Flash\ Builder\ 4/sdks/
ls
cp -r 4.0.0 4.0.0AIR2
ls
cp ~/Downloads/air2_rc1_sdk_mac_051110.tbz2 4.0.0AIR2
cd 4.0.0AIR2
tar jxvf air2_rc1_sdk_mac_051110.tbz2

I then added a new SDK to the installed SDK’s inside of Flash Builder:

Now, I already had an Adobe AIR application project set up, and I switched over to the new SDK the I installed:

However, when I tried to run my AIR application, I ran into this error:

VerifyError: Error #1014: Class IIMEClient could not be found.
 
	at flash.display::MovieClip/nextFrame()
	at mx.managers::SystemManager/deferredNextFrame()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\managers\SystemManager.as:267]
	at mx.managers::SystemManager/preloader_preloaderDocFrameReadyHandler()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\managers\SystemManager.as:2460]
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
	at mx.preloaders::Preloader/timerHandler()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\preloaders\Preloader.as:488]
	at flash.utils::Timer/_timerDispatch()
	at flash.utils::Timer/tick()

After doing a bit of research I found out that my Adobe AIR project’s application descriptor file wasn’t using the correct namespace for the AIR 2.0 SDK. According to the Adobe AIR 2 Release Notes:

You must update your application descriptor file to the 2.0 namespace in order to access the new AIR 2 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 2 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace from 1.x based namespace. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/2.0

Sure enough, I hadn’t changed my namespace from AIR 1.5.3 to AIR 2.

I made the change in the descriptor file, and now everything works perfectly.

I will be giving this presentation again tonight at the Seattle Flex User Group, so if you are in Seattle… show up. We’ll have a bit more time for questions at tonight’s presentation.

:: PRESENTATION MATERIALS ::

Slides
TechWed Presentation
FlexMeetup.com Presentation

My Dock

Let’s start off with my dock on my laptop:

I’m well aware that this isn’t every piece of software that Adobe makes, but it’s what I use.

I haven’t bought Premiere or After Effects because I haven’t had a need for them recently. I’ve been out of video editing for a while (Although, I might spring for AE soon, I have some fun video / Flash experiments in mind).

I’m not a print designer so InDesign is not my cup of tea.

Captivate isn’t on the Mac, or else I would absolutely have it. Does anybody know of a good screen recording solution for the Mac?

Director, meh… I’ll use Adobe AIR instead.

Flash Media Server developer edition is installed, and the Admin console isn’t on my dock.

Flash Paper isn’t on the Mac either… oh Flash Paper… you’ve had a rough life.

Anything I’m missing, please feel free to chime in.

My Career

I have built my entire career on Macromedia and Adobe products. Starting out as a web designer, and then moving into ColdFusion and ultimately working with the Flash platform. I’ve been riding the RIA and rich user experience wave since the beginning, and Adobe has been making that wave bigger and bigger with each passing year.

Currently, I am the Senior Adobe Developer (cool title right?) for T-Mobile USA’s Retail Technologies team.. doing research and prototype development using Adobe’s products.

My Free-time

As if working with Adobe products all day long at work wasn’t enough. When I get home, I spend most of my free-time working with Adobe products. It’s a curse really… I have all of these really cool ideas for projects and experiments, and only so much time within the day to work on them.

I also spend loads of my time reading blogs and articles, attending user groups, blogging, planning events (like the BugQuash), and many other things that are related to Adobe products.

My Bookshelf

And finally, my bookshelf:

This photo doesn’t include the boxes of books that I have in the garage, but it should give you an idea of my obsession with technology.

Conclusion

So that’s why I claim to be an Adobeholic. I’d love to see what all of your bookshelves look like. So take pictures and leave them in the comments below.

Your tip for the day… The Flex SDK team has a guide that explains the coding conventions that they use within the SDK (for the most part).

Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices

I agree with almost all of the conventions they list here. If you’re planning on contributing the to Flex SDK, you NEED to be familiar with these conventions.

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:

1. Select your AIR application in the Flex navigator
2. From the menu choose, Project > Properties
3. Choose “Flex Compiler”
4. Add “-target-player=10″ to your Additional compiler arguments
5. Click OK

This isn’t limited to Adobe AIR, you can set the target player of your Flex applications as well.

I just wanted to ping everyone and get their opinion on something. Why would anyone ever want to use the include directive? I’ve recently been working on poorly designed project where at the top of every module there is an “include Header.as” statement that has 30 include statements within it. To give a datagrid additional functionality, you give it an id=”myDataGrid”, and the include statement takes care of the rest. It’s really bad.

I just don’t see a good use for the include statement anymore. In my opinion, it just promotes bad programming practices.

I mean, can’t everything be taken care of using OOP methodologies? Thoughts?

I’d like to thank everyone who responded, you all gave me quite a bit of insight.

After thinking about this for a while now, here is my list of the common reasons people incorrectly use include (include directive).

I have common functionality that I want shared across multiple components.

That’s great that you’re using DRY philosophy! However, it’s much better to combine the DRY philosophy with object-oriented programming practices. Instead of using the include directive, abstract out common functionality into a parent class. Then you can create children of your parent component, and add additional functionality as needed.

I’m building a framework.

Great… don’t use include. See above reason.

I want to use Code-Behind.

Ted Patrick wrote a wonderful post on Code-Behind in Flex 2. He accomplishes Code-Behind, and does so in an object-oriented manner without using include statements.

Adobe doesn’t natively allow multiple inheritance in AS3, and using the include directive is the only way to fake it.

Frankly, if you understand that statement… you’re advanced enough to know what you’re doing, and you don’t need this tip.

== Conclusion ==

There are rare occasions where include is exactly what you need. However, if you still feel you have a valid reason to use the include directive on a regular basis, please leave a comment below and explain yourself.

To be honest with you guys, I’ve never really been a huge fan of Fireworks. I’m a Photoshop guy, and I have been since version 5.5 (hooray ImageReady). However, at our last SeaFlex meeting Marty gave a quick introduction into Flex skinning using Fireworks. My eyes were opened! So here is the basic run down of creating Flex skins using Fireworks CS4.

1. Within Fireworks go to Commands > Flex Skinning > New Flex Skin
   
2. Select the components you want to skin.
   
3. Skin to your heart’s desire.
   
4. When you’re finished, go to Commands > Flex Skinning > Export Flex Skin
   
5. I created a new folder called testSkin and saved to that.
   
6. Now in Flex Builder. File > Import > Skin Artwork
   
7. Browse to the folder we just exported our assets to.
   
8. Make sure the image to component mappings are correct.
   
9. And…. you’re done.
   

Amazing.

:: UPDATE ::

Marty just posted a PC (and more in depth version) of the skinning your Flex applications with Fireworks. Read it here!

As I talked about in my Why YOU should contribute to Flex post, Adobe wants our input. Here they are again asking the community, “What do you think”?

I commented on Mike’s post.

I think that a more centralized component library and delivery system would make the lives of many developers much easier.

Take RubyGems for example. It’s extremely easy for developers to benefit from the work of others. This has increased the value of Ruby in my eyes tenfold.

As a developer, there isn’t a uniform place that I can go check to see if someone has done this before. So I have to scour the net for a while trying to find a solution by looking through blogs, articles, googlecode, etc…

I know there are a few places out there that make this easier. RIAForge, Adobe Developer Connection, Project Sprouts, Adobe TV, flexcoders.

Most of these sites (blogs especially), have a way to externally interact with them. I think that an Adobe sponsored site or program that would allow a developer to quickly see what’s out there would be an amazing asset to brand new ActionScript developer and veterans alike.

However, I didn’t realize until now, that Adobe is already doing this. This dream “site or program” does exist as the Tour de Flex. Which if you haven’t installed yet, I highly recommend it.

As the title of this post says, it’s no rubygems (not yet anyways)… but it’s a start. Go Adobe!