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Serious about Adobe Flex development? If so, you need AEDS

Posted on November 30, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

I’ve been working with Adobe Flex for about six months now. Prior to that, I had done some occasional work with Flash for the past few years. I believe in investing time in training to learn the “right” way to do things, so I started off by subcribing to lynda.com and watching their Flex training videos. We also purchased a copy of Total Training’s Flex series as well.

These resources were great starting points, but it didn’t take long before I found myself diving into things that went beyond the topics covered by the training courses. For the past couple of months in particular, I’ve done countless web searches trying to find answers on the flexcoders list and Adobe user-to-user discussion forums. I’ve also posted a few messages, many of which received no replies. It’s understandable with a new technology like Flex 2. The users with questions far outnumber the users with answers.

This week, we decided to look into the paid support programs offered by Adobe. They offer the Adobe Enterprise Developer Support program for $1,495 per year. If you are trying to develop a commercial offering, are under a tight deadline or can justify it by any other means, the value of this program FAR outweighs its cost!

I’ve already had a few rounds of correspondence with my Adobe Support Engineer and gotten answers to questions like he was sitting in the office next to me. I’ve been really enjoying working with Flex now that I have a direct line to the answers to my questions. So, take my advice…if you’re trying to get up to speed on Flex quickly, get with the program!

Flex: Using custom scrollbar skins? You’ll run into this problem!

Posted on November 30, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

I’m working on a custom look for an Adobe Flex app and ran into a hard-coded annoyance. The mx:Container class has a hard-coded “whiteBox” shape that is used to (wait for it!) display a white box in the bottom-right corner of the container’s content area if both horizontal and vertical scroll bars are being displayed, as seen below. Keep reading if you want to know how to fix this…

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mx:Panel-derived MXML component problem confirmed by Adobe

Posted on November 22, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

Adobe Q&A confirmed that the problem I described in my previous post still exists in their latest Flex build:

Thanks for filing this bug. I’ve reproduced it internally in our latest builds. It’s pretty late in the game for our next release, so the fix won’t make it into our next update of Flex, but, it might get into 3.0. The bug has been logged internally.

In the meantime, you can use the workaround demonstrated here.

Another Flex bug: mx:Panel-derived MXML component problems

Posted on November 20, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

Before I get into this one, please read my recent follow-up on the last Adobe-verified Flex bug I found. The Adobe Flex team was outstanding in their handling of that one. Let’s see how they do on this one.

The problem I’ve found this time involves creating a new MXML component that is derived from the mx:Panel container. You can’t assign visual effects to controls in the new container. Well, technically you can, but they won’t work.

Check out the example and the workaround here. Don’t forget to right click and select “View Source” if you want to see what’s going on.

Flexible Rails

Posted on November 20, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Ruby on Rails

For anyone that reads my blog looking for Flex info, I’d like to kindly point you toward FlexibleRails. Peter Armstrong is writing a book on combining Flex and RoR.

I haven’t ordered my copy just yet as I haven’t had time to fully review the sample. Still, it’s something for your consideration if you’re interested in combining these web development platforms.

Adobe Flex switch-case bug follow-up

Posted on November 20, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

Whew! I’ve been really busy for awhile now, but I wanted to follow up on my post regarding Flex’s problems with nested switch case statements. It turns out the bug is in the Flash 9 player, not the Flex compiler. Not that that fixes anything.

Kudos are due to Adobe for their handling of this though. I received an email from David Mendels less than 2 hours after my blog posting asking that I forward details to their team. David is the Senior VP of Adobe’s Enterprise and Developer Solutions Unit (aka the Flex unit). Two days later, Matt Chotin (one of the principal engineers on the Flex team) confirmed the bug, explained it was in the player and that it was actually worse than I thought.

It’s been a LOOOOOONG time since I’ve seen this level of developer support from a vendor. Thanks Adobe!!!