Swiz: Cafe Townsend example (incl. FlexUnit tests)
April 25th, 2010
UPDATE [06/16/10]: Example and its full source has been updated using latest Swiz 1.0 RC 1.
Cafe Townsend is a well known application to demonstrate any MVC framework for using Flex or ActionScript. There are already ports of Cairngorm, Mate, PureMVC, Spring ActionScript, RobotLegs and now Swiz.
In cooperation with “my partner in crime” Sönke Rohde we have built a Swiz port including unit tests. Check out the following example and its source.
Slides und Source vom flexughh-Meeting: “Wait A Frame! Das Flex 4 Komponenten Model und seinen Life Cycle verstehen”
April 6th, 2010
Nochmals vielen Dank, dass Ihr beim heutigen flexughh-Meeting “Wait A Frame! Das Flex 4 Komponenten Model und seinen Life Cycle verstehen.” so zahlreich erschienen seid und auch tapfer bis zum Ende des Vortrages durchgehalten habt 
Es hat großen Spass gemacht!
Hier die versprochenen Slides inkl. Source Code.
Mate: Cafe Townsend example updated for using Flex 4
March 12th, 2010
For an upcoming Flex 4 training I do need a good example for using Mate framework. At the moment you will find a lot of examples on Mate’s official website or at the project called “mate-examples” at Google Code. But it seems that there is not any Flex 4 example available.
Anyway, I just ported the current Cafe Townsend example (Flex 3) created by Laura Arguello to Flex 4.
Quick Tip (Flex 4): Using asfunction in TLF (Text Layout Framework)
February 25th, 2010
Do you remember the very old school global function called asfunction? It was used to call custom ActionScript methods clicking an HTML link. The definition in HTML was something like this: < a href='asfunction:myFunction' >my link< /a > .
Quick tip (Flex 4): Goodbye templates – hello mxmlContent
October 2nd, 2009
Back in Flex 3
In Flex 3 is it pretty painful to extend a custom container component for adding children to it using MXML. The following example will throw an error like this: Error: Multiple sets of visual children have been specified for this component (base component definition and derived component definition).
Custom ApplicationUpdaterUI for using AIR Update Framework in Flex 4
September 9th, 2009
Flex 4 is Rock ‘n’ Roll! However, Flex 4 is still beta and it can’t be perfect right now. Today one of the most missing feature for me is using the ApplicationUpdaterUI of the Adobe AIR Update Framework in Flex 4. This bug is already documented. (BTW: Please vote here to fix this issue! )
Anyway, I can’t wait for the final release of Flex 4, so I decided to build a custom ApplicationUpdaterUI component based on the new Spark skinning architecture. The custom ApplicationUpdaterUI is built on the top of the current version of Adobes AIR Update Framework and most of the current features are available (e.g. auto check, localization etc.) The component is full skinnable using it as an external window (as before) or as an embedded view component in an application (without the need of a popup window).
Testing states of skin classes in Flex 4 using WSSkinStatesTester
September 6th, 2009
WSSkinStatesTester is a handy tool to test visually all states of any skin classes in Flex 4 (Gumbo).
Quick tip (Flex 4): Using generic skin classes
August 10th, 2009
For skinning Flex 4 components you have a lot of great options. One way is using a custom skin class, which extends a Skin or a SparkSkin class and defines all needed style properties by itself.
Imagine a custom button skin, which is more complex than the standard Spark ButtonSkin. It declares additional gradients, rectangles, transitions etc. If you code all needed values for any style properties within this skin class, you may have to create another button skin class for using only one or two different style properties. Doing this, the amount of skin classes can be increased rapidly!
Speed up JPEG encoding using Alchemy
June 21st, 2009
Few weeks ago Thibault Imbert published an optimized version of Adobes JPGEncoder. And it rocks! However, if you may have very big-size bitmaps it takes too much time to encode images. For example: A bitmap with a size of 2000px x 1500px takes 22 sec. (BTW: Adobes version 30 sec.!!)
Today I came across to a post by Manfred Weber, which points to a discussion at Adobes Alchemy forum. There you will find a great solution published by metalbot for encoding JPEGs using Alchemy. It’s based on a C library for JPEG image compression by IJG and it’s pretty fast (2,7 sec. for 2000 px x 1500px ) !!! Check out the example:
ThunderBolt AS3 version 2.2 out now!
March 8th, 2009
ThunderBolt AS3, which is a lightweight logger extension for Flex 3-4, AIR and Flash 9-10 applications, has been updated to version 2.2.
Check out the new features:
