The Morphic Group

Architecting Flex Applications Presentation

October 11, 2008 – 10:57 am by Joey
For those attending the user group meetings where I present on the topic of Architecting Flex Applications you may have interest in downloading the code for the sample application. The sample application is from Programming Flex 3, where you can find more detailed information and explanations about the application itself. However, the code is fairly well commented as well, and the application code is a free download. You can download it from the Google Code site using SVN or as a .zip file. If you are using SVN then go to http://code.google.com/p/flickrflex/source/checkout to view the repository URL. If you want to download the code as a .zip then go to http://code.google.com/p/flickrflex/downloads/list. I've also converted the presentation slides to a Google presentation document, which you can view at http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dgr5k2pm_19c64zt3cx. If you have questions then you can certainly post comments. Since I'm traveling I cannot guarantee a fast reply. However, I will field ...

Posted in ActionScript, Flex, Technology | No Comments »

Detroit Presentation (Adobe AIR)

October 9, 2008 – 10:57 am by Joey
The presentation on Adobe AIR in Detroit (technically in Canton, MI) went very well. Thanks to Deborah for helping to organize the event for Refresh Detroit and for bringing together her group and the Detroit Area Adobe User Group for the event. For those in attendance I've just posted the files for the demo application. You can download them from http://www.themorphicgroup.com/presentations/2008/airflex/download.zip. The code is not commented since I just threw it together and since it is quite simple. It does use standard patterns, and it should be fairly simple to figure out. However, if you have questions you may post them here as comments. Please note that since I'm traveling it might take a little while before I can address your questions. Also, comments on our blog are moderated, and your comments won't show up until one of the administrators can approve your comment (sometimes takes a while since we ...

Posted in Adobe AIR, Technology | No Comments »

Joey Lott’s Cross-Country Lecture Tour

September 30, 2008 – 2:04 pm by Sam Roach
Joey Lott (author and co-founder/partner at The Morphic Group) has embarked on a cross-country lecture series. Joey will be speaking to hundreds of developers across the nation on best practices in Flex, Flash and AIR development. As well as teaching, Joey will also be spreading the word on career opportunities at The Morphic Group.  Here is Joey's tour schedule: Detroit - September 23 St. Louis - October 4 - AS3 Apex in St. Louis Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash. Space is limited so please RSVP. Cleveland - October 9 - Cleveland Flex User's Group Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash. Harrisburg - October 10 - Central PA Adobe User Group & Central PA Flash User Group Presenting "How To Architect Flex Applications." Philadelphia - October 22 - Philadelphia Flex User Group Presenting Flex, Actionscript, and Flash. Raleigh - October 25 - More information to come. Lafayette - November 3 - Acadiana Adobe User Group Joey Lott, author of the upcoming O'Reilly ...

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The Morphic Group Sponsors CS4 Event in San Fransisco

September 26, 2008 – 1:51 pm by Seth
The Morphic Group is happy to be a sponsor for the "It's Going to be Brilliant" launch event Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 in San Fransisco. Be among the first to see the CS4 big picture at this special joint meeting of 7 Northern California user groups hosted by Adobe. Enjoy free pizza and special prizes. If you are in the San Fransisco area please join us: When: September 30, 2008 at 6:30 PM Where: Adobe San Francisco Building - 601 Townsend at 7th Cost: FREE!! RSVP: http://www.baadaug.org/

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Example of Feature Rich ItemRenderers in Flex

September 15, 2008 – 5:00 pm by Seth
In response to some requests I got from friends wanting some more real world ItemRenderer examples, here is one that approaches the item renderer from a graphical approach and brings together some different techniques to create a nicely featured ItemRenderer. Here is what this example DataGrid/ItemRender demonstrates: MXML based ItemRenderer Override ItemRenderer 'set data' have data as a known ValueObject Swap icons/images based on data values Highlight selected ItemRenderer Enable ItemRenderer to dispatch an event to remove a person from the grid View the Example with source enabled DataProvider and ValueObjects The first thing we'll look at in the example is the data and data provider for the Grid. Keep in mind this is just a quick demo way to load sample data, the goal is to create an ArrayCollection of Value Objects. The sample XML data is loaded via an HTTPService. When the result comes back from the ...

Posted in Flex | No Comments »

Using ServiceCapture and Fiddler with FireFox

September 5, 2008 – 11:40 pm by Sam Ahn
I've been using both ServiceCapture and Fiddler for a while now to debug HTTP traffic from web applications (I've dabbled with TamperData but never got hooked). Using such software with FireFox was a bit cumbersome due to the network settings you have to turn on and off. That is until I stumbled across the ConnSets plugin. ConnSets lets you save network settings configurations and switch from one to another with a click of a menu option. Here are some tips for working with ConnSets: Create a Default Setting After installing ConnSets, you get the default option "none - Standard" as shown in this screenshot: Selecting "none - Standard" essentially turns off ConnSets. If you've changed your network settings and then choose "none - Standard" it does not reset your settings to the default "Direct connection to the Internet". Create a default setting and use that instead of "none - Standard". Go to: Tools > Options ...

Posted in Flash, Flex, Technology | 2 Comments »

SVN hidden files affecting Flash CS3 publishing

August 5, 2008 – 9:47 pm by Sam Ahn
It appears that SVN hidden files can affect Flash CS3 publishing. A couple other developers and I came across an issue when trying to publish an .fla. We're all on Window XP and the files are in SVN. One day Flash started showing errors when publishing such as: 1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: [class with static consts]. 5001: The name of package '[class package]' does not reflect the location of this file. Please change the package definition's name inside this file, or move the file. [class pointing to library symbol] Of course we couldn't find any issues with the code or .fla. After much trial and error it was discovered that if you exported the source files (thus removing all SVN hidden files) it published without any errors. After even more trial and error, it was discovered that there is some threshold of files in SVN that ...

Posted in Flash | 3 Comments »

The Morphic Group Helps Build PermissionTV PDK

July 30, 2008 – 10:11 am by Joey
The Morphic Group has been working with PermissionTV since 2007, lending our engineering expertise to the architecture and development of the next generation of the PermissionTV platform. Specifically we've been working with them on the Platform Development Kit (PDK), which contains a large set of libraries and an application architecture designed for the express purpose of building highly flexible video applications for the PermissionTV platform using Flash and/or Flex. PermissionTV just announced the official launch of the PDK, and now we get to talk about the work we've been doing. This is good news for us because now we can finally start to disclose details of what we've been working on in silence for months and months. We think the PDK is one of the coolest projects we've seen in a long time. We really like PermissionTV, and we think they've got a real edge over their competitors because they are ...

Posted in News | No Comments »

Dynamically Getting JavaScript Properties

July 23, 2008 – 10:44 pm by Sam Ahn
Jumping off of Joey's post about anonymous functions from externalinterface, here's a quick and perhaps obvious method of dynamically getting JavaScript properties: package examples { import flash.external.ExternalInterface; public class JavaScript { public static function getProperty(name:String):Object { var property:Object; if (ExternalInterface.available) { property = ExternalInterface.call("function() { return " + name +"; }"); } else { property = new Object() } return property; } ...

Posted in ActionScript, Flash, Flex, Technology | No Comments »

Flex Link Buttons: Adding line breaks/wordwrap functionality

July 23, 2008 – 4:05 pm by Dennis
In my endless pursuit to rely more on the flex framework instead of created components from the ground up (call it a outset of flash-itis), I still find cases where I need to refine flex components. For example, Link buttons. How do you add line breaks and word wrapping in a link button? After a bit of searching ... I found this simple solution that I would like to share. You would essential extend the linkButton class by creating your own custom linkButton. This custom component would override createChildren and measureText methods. In createChildren(), you would enable "textField" to workwrap and allow multiple lines. Then in measureText(), the correct height and width needs to be set by getting line metrics of the "textField". Note: "textField" is a Text Field property in the base class. ... override protected function createChildren():void { super.createChildren(); if (textField){ ...

Posted in Flex | 1 Comment »