KM Blogs: John C. Bland II on *

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April 28, 2006

Flex 2: US States ComboBox Component

It is so easy to create a component in Flex 2. I never got into doing them in Flash because it seemed like so much extra work that wasn’t worth it; always interested…just never took the plunge. Well, Flex 2 changes all of that. Creating a component is as simple as creating a new MXML doc, giving it a base class (in this case mx:ComboBox), and doing whatever it is you want to do. :-)

I needed a combobox that listed all of the states. I basically took the states from another Flash combobox with the same data. It isn’t much but could save you some typing time.


<mx:ComboBox xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns="*">
	<mx:dataProvider>
		<mx:String>AL</mx:String>
		<mx:String>AK</mx:String>
		<mx:String>AS</mx:String>
		<mx:String>AZ</mx:String>
		<mx:String>AR</mx:String>
		<mx:String>CA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>CO</mx:String>
		<mx:String>CT</mx:String>
		<mx:String>DE</mx:String>
		<mx:String>DC</mx:String>
		<mx:String>FL</mx:String>
		<mx:String>GA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>GU</mx:String>
		<mx:String>HI</mx:String>
		<mx:String>ID</mx:String>
		<mx:String>IL</mx:String>
		<mx:String>IN</mx:String>
		<mx:String>IA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>KS</mx:String>
		<mx:String>KY</mx:String>
		<mx:String>LA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>ME</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MH</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MD</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MI</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MN</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MS</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MO</mx:String>
		<mx:String>MT</mx:String>
		<mx:String>NE</mx:String>
		<mx:String>NV</mx:String>
		<mx:String>NH</mx:String>
		<mx:String>NJ</mx:String>
		<mx:String>NC</mx:String>
		<mx:String>ND</mx:String>
		<mx:String>OH</mx:String>
		<mx:String>OK</mx:String>
		<mx:String>OR</mx:String>
		<mx:String>RI</mx:String>
		<mx:String>SC</mx:String>
		<mx:String>SD</mx:String>
		<mx:String>TN</mx:String>
		<mx:String>TX</mx:String>
		<mx:String>UT</mx:String>
		<mx:String>VT</mx:String>
		<mx:String>VI</mx:String>
		<mx:String>VA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>WA</mx:String>
		<mx:String>WV</mx:String>
		<mx:String>WI</mx:String>
		<mx:String>WY</mx:String>
	</mx:dataProvider>
</mx:ComboBox>

One thing to note is calling (if myCombo was your id) myCombo.selectedItem returns the value. No need to read the lable or data field here.

I hope this helps someone.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 2:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 27, 2006

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I just got this from my buddy Cooper. It is quite funny. Somehow he finds/gets ahold of some super funny and coo videos. This is one of them.

Check it out here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

EVB.com

I just went back to WhenShe’sHot.com while in discussion over motograph (which I’ll post more about at a later date) and noticed the “Site by EVB” link at the bottom. So I checked it out.

At first view I had to figure out what I was looking at. The site doesn’t follow the normal conventions of site nav and/or layout but after a couple seconds you see why. So what did I like?

The book flip is probably the best I’ve seen yet.
The portfolio is quite extensive. They are the one’s behind Whopperrettes.com and WhenShesHot.com along with many other very nice sites.
There isn’t much to the site. It is straight to the point. “Here is our contact info, what we’ve done recently, and some news items.”

They get my bid on being a (VERY) Nice Site!

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

FMUG.az Preso: Flex 2.0 by Jesse Warden Follow-up

The preso went great last night. Jesse was a rock star as usual and Breeze was only slow at certain times (namely screen sharing). Hopefully the recording doesn’t show up with the same lag but either way Jesse handled it well, showed great examples, and even made us laugh (go figure; a guy nicknamed Jester made us laugh). :-)

The preso recording URL hasn’t been released. As soon as I get the URL I will post an update to this post as well as update the gotoAndStop.org site.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 24, 2006

Flex: Implementing Back Button & History

How hard is it to implement the back button in Flex? Well, it is pretty arduous if you like to type extra code. To implement the back button here are the steps you need to do.

NOTHING!

Yep, when creating the projct a history.js file (along with others) get copied to your /bin directory (or your output directory). I knew the files were there but figured you had to implement it in some way with a parameter or tab of some sort.

I freaked when I hit the Back button to hit the page I was on prior to testing a swf and what happened? It went to the previous tab in the application! Oh yeah…INCLUDING ANIMATIONS! It basically did exactly what you would expect an app to do.

How sweet is that?

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Adobe Labs locked down

Hrmmm…this is an odd move. Adobe labs has been locked down to a Notification page, see here.

I was on my way there to show someone the Flex store (needed URL) and found an email addy/country request page. I hope this doesn’t mean all of labs will be shutdown from now on. Maybe it is a mix-up. This kind of contradicts the fact that labs is supposed to be publicly available.

Maybe I’m freakin’ for no reason but…what’s up Adobe?

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

FMUG.az Preso: Flex 2.0 by Jesse Warden

Come one come all! (I’ve always wanted to say that).

Jesse Warden will speak on Flex 2 at this months FMUG.az meeting. For more information visit gotoAndStop.org.

Flex 2 has tons of sweet spots that will thoroughly impress you. It is by far the easiest way to create rich internet applications on the web, including Ajax frameworks. I’m not biased here…just being truthful. I’ve explored Atlas, Backbase, and others but none compare to the abilities and speed of Flex. Not saying they aren’t good because they definitely have their place (Atlas is pretty sweet) but Flex 2 is no doubt going to reign supreme.

See you there!

Update:
To help propogate the URL to the Breeze preso, you can get to the live preso here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Paging, Paging, and more Paging!!!!

If you follow my blog you’ll remember I posted about my first ASP.Net site experience and raved about the paging feature. Either way, you can read my post here.

Well, it seems this is the year clients want paging on EVERYTHING. :-) KM has been contracted to do the following sites with paging:

(shows visual element [+ backend] + database)

PHP + Microsoft Access
Coldfusion + SQL 2005
Flash + PHP + MySQL

Every one of those languages/implementations called for custom paging code. I’m so sick of writing the variables totalPages, currentPage, etc! LOL. (clients; don’t let this deter you. we’ll still code it for you) :-)

Ultimately, it goes back to how easy it was in ASP.Net to add paging to a table of data (1 parameter and I’m done). I just wish it was this easy across the board.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Visual Studio Express Free for Life

I just read this on Tim Heur’s blog here. This is a pretty big move by Microsoft, in my opinion (as are all of my comments to follow). Microsoft has always been a money machine so releasing major products (SQL Server Express included) for free is big. Yes, they are “express” editions but still. When I decided to learn C# I had a free tool to download and work with. When I started reading up on Delphi…hrmmm…Borland wasn’t as nice which deterred my efforts. I won’t spend thousands on software just to learn a language. Notepad is out of the question unless it is do-or-die to learn it. Code completion saves tons of time debugging. ;-)

Bottom line…good stuff Microsoft!

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 22, 2006

Next Flash IDE in Eclipse?

This is nothing but my thoughts and no reflection on what Adobe will do with the next version of Flash.

I was just developing an app, pretty sweet one too (NDA’d so can’t speak on it), in the Flash IDE and starting missing Visual Studio features. AS now reminds me of C# (and vice versa) so my mind wondered for a spell. I started thinking of all sorts of features the next Flash IDE could have, namely for coding, and I noticed a lot of the features I am longing for are included in the AS Editor for FlexBuilder 2.0.

This definitely makes me wonder. If Adobe is taking resources to build the entire Flex IDE in Eclipse why wouldn’t the Flash team build on top of or simply implement the same AS editor? Why rebuild the wheel?

Continue reading "Next Flash IDE in Eclipse?" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flash Player 9

This has been public for a lil’ bit now but I saw another post about it on Peter Elst’s blog and it made me want to post a link to his post. My only reason for doing so is Peter’s blog is looks sweet! :-) He’s a guru in the Flash community already so it isn’t like he needs the pub but figured I’d give a lil’.

Basically, Flash Player 8.5 is now Flash Player 9. There is a FAQ on labs here and you can read more on Peter’s blog here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apollo Preso @ FITC

It seems Adobe is showing off Apollo at FITC and wowing some people. There is a Flickr feed up that showcases some images from the preso. All of this info I found on Ryan Stewart’s blog here.

The best part I’ve seen so far is how Apollo can create apps with HTML/JS alone. That is pretty sweet. This definitely opens up the arena for other developers who don’t care for Flash to build apps with potentially native knowledge. Also helps out the Ajax community. Most Ajax’ers I speak to live and die by it and bash Flash. Those people probably won’t touch this simply because it is related to Flash. lol. That would probably be a minority though.

One of the other slick parts is the PDF support. I’m not 100% sure how it’ll integrate and/or even be useful but I’m sure Adobe has something up there sleeve that will wow us.

Checkout Ryan’s blog and peep the Flickr feed. There are some very interesting images in there.

Good stuff Adobe!

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flex 2.0 Beta 2 is sooooo smooth

(This is nothing but a fluff post) :-)

One of KM’s clients decided to go with Flex 2 Beta 2 for an admin we’re building and it has been nothing but a pleasure to use. I’ve been around Flex since 1 but haven’t had a true Flex project (other than toying around) to actually get in and really see the power.

As said, this is fluff so I’m not going to go into every lil’ thing but some of the sweet parts are:
# Components are super slick and easy to create.
# Animations (basic one’s) are so easy to implement. I create a tabbed navigation and with 2 parameters was able to make it resize to the content (resizeToContent=”true”) and tween while resizing (resizeEffect=”Resize”).
# AS 3 is pretty nice. I haven’t seen all of the sweet spots but it definitely feels like it is a lil’ more grown up now.
# FlexBuild is clean. The code completion, error checking, and design view are worth their weight in gold.

I don’t want to go on and on so I’ll stop here. Just know Flex dev is super slick!

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 19, 2006

Back to normal

For the past 4 and a half months I was a slave to my desk/computer. A huge project came to KM in December which through several things off and for 4+ months I was working Monday - Thursday from wake-up to the weeeeeee hours in the morning. I decided to end it with 2 weeks of straight work (14 days straight; minus a couple Sundays where I barely touched the PC).

This week is the beginning of my normal schedule. I am back to a 9 to 5 (or whenever I wake up to 5 really) and it feels great. I’m happier than I have been in a long time and really look forward to getting off work which is a little odd, to be honest. The good thing is my family gets me again and I get my life back. No more am I a slave to this desk. :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 14, 2006

Socom 3: New Clan

I went ahead and switched clans. Crime was never online, at least when I was, and it was pretty much inactive in battles, etc. I’m now with .-nMe-[EneMy]. Happy gaming! :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Delegate.create and removeEventListener

I ran into the strangest bug tonight. In my remoting calls I used

rc.addEventListener("result", Delegate.create(this, MyResultCallBack));

Well, when using removeEventListener it would remove the listener with any of my efforts. So, I decided to Google it and found out you have to store a reference to the callback (including Delegate code) then use that reference to remove the listener.

Here is the example found here.
—————————————————————————————-
bc[as].. import mx.utils.Delegate;
var dataGridDelegate:Function = Delegate.create(this,onMyDataGridChange);
myDataGrid.addEventListener(“change”, dataGridDelegate);
function onMyDataGridChange(eventObj:Object):Void
{
trace(“myDataGrid change event fired”);
}

Then, you can remove the listener with this code:

myDataGrid.removeEventListener("change", dataGridDelegate);
p. -----------------------------------------------------------

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 13, 2006

Active Content Developer Center

With all of the Eolas talk I figured I’d show people where to go for knowledge on still providing active content (Flash, etc) in IE.

Click here for more information.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google Calendar Beta

Google has launched Google Calendar which now gives you calendar functionality on the web. Kind of interesting to me since Outlook 2003 doesn’t work for me in Vista. :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 12, 2006

Allaire CF 4.0 docs still around

I was online doing some searching and found an Allaire doc for CF 4.0 on Macromedia’s site. For whatever reason I thought they would have redone them as Macromedia or something. :-) Either way…very cool to see how it was done way back when.

Check out “Developing Web Applications with ColdFusion” here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 11, 2006

CrystalTech is providing Linux servers

CrystalTech is now offering Linux dedicated servers at a very reasonable price. It is amazing the strides they make to stay on top of their game. CrystalTech is our choice for web hosting and we don’t see this changing any time soon. If you are looking for a great web host be sure to visit CrystalTech.com.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Great .Net Resource(s)

I’ve been directed to asp.net several times to check some things out but I never went through the site thoroughly. There are some really great asp.net controls, sample projects, links to downloads, and other great assets. Check it out.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 10, 2006

DeardorffInc.com

Deardorff (DC), one of KM”s biggest clients, recently launched a very nice site. It uses a great blend between dark colors and vibrant colors in a very smooth way. It definitely gives a better vibe about who/what DC really is. The last site was nice but this site really gives a much better and professional vibe. Good stuff DC!

Check it out here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 8, 2006

Dreamweaver 8 JS Error fix for Windows Vista

The following Javascript error(s) occurred:
At line 56 of file "C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 8\Configuration\Shared\Common\Scripts\dwscriptsExtData.js": ReferenceError: dwscripts is not defined

Today I opened DW after a night of work and this error showed up. This was quite annoying. It seems this is a common problem, not limited to Vista, but everything I found about the error spoke towards pre-Vista folder structures. Here is a discussion regarding the possible fixes and here is the one I used. I’ll highlight the differences in the steps here.

Continue reading "Dreamweaver 8 JS Error fix for Windows Vista" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

April 7, 2006

IE 7 Beta 2 Preview - 3/20/2006

There is a newer beta of IE 7 out. I thought Vista was carrying the latest build but I should’ve known better since I don’t have the latest Vista build (on 5308). I am about to download it shortly and see if they fixed a lot of the issues I have problems with.

Click here to download.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flex Builder 2 Beta 2 on Windows Vista

Bottom line…it doesn’t work. :-) I can’t even install it as a plugin. It keeps telling me to select the Eclipse folder even though I have. So I installed it as a full install and it won’t even open . It seems there is a problem with some Java classes in the /configuration folder but I haven’t looked too deep into it.

Here is the exact error. I’ll Google it later since KM will be doing a Flex project in the next week or so. If it doesn’t work I’ll have to use my laptop. :-( (smaller screen, slower processor, etc)

!SESSION 2006-04-07 18:27:06.397 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=unknown
java.version=1.4.2_09
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments:  -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2006-04-07 18:27:07.221
!MESSAGE Startup error
!STACK 1
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: ""
	at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Unknown Source)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.FileManager.updateTable(FileManager.java:479)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.FileManager.open(FileManager.java:665)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseAdaptor.initFileManager(EclipseAdaptor.java:818)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseAdaptor.initialize(EclipseAdaptor.java:139)
	at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.Framework.initialize(Framework.java:128)
	at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.Framework.<init>(Framework.java:106)
	at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.OSGi.createFramework(OSGi.java:90)
	at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.OSGi.<init>(OSGi.java:31)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.startup(EclipseStarter.java:272)
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:159)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:334)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:278)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:973)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:948)
!SESSION Fri Apr 07 18:27:07 GMT 2006 ------------------------------------------
!ENTRY org.eclipse.core.launcher 4 0 2006-04-07 18:27:07.233
!MESSAGE Exception launching the Eclipse Platform:
!STACK
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:172)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:334)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:278)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:973)
	at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:948)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

April 2, 2006

First ASP.Net Site

This is the first post in the .Net category for this blog. I created this category since C# doesn’t quite cover the spectrum of .Net in terms of all it can do. So, this category will be for .Net specifc and C# will be for C#.

With that said, I created my first ASP.Net site today. I did it just to toy around and test some of the stuff I’ve seen (at Mix) and read in my book(s)/online. There are several things that were kind of odd to me but in the grand scheme of things…WOW. Let me list likes and dislikes.

Continue reading "First ASP.Net Site" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 1, 2006

Stock Photos provided?

I’m a part of this new business opportunity (outside of KM) and am working on a slideshow. Well, I am designing it as well so I went to the Stock Exchange a couple weeks ago while I was creating comps to grab up some imagery. Well, I am finally signed on, etc so they sent me some stock photos they have on CD.

WOW! I have never worked with anyone or on anything where 14 CD’s were filled with all sorts of photography, sorted by type, and of excellent quality. Although this post doesn’t reveal what I’m doing, with who, or the biz opportunity it goes to show some people (clients, partners, businesses, or otherwise) can be prepared for a venture. :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Obfuscated PHP fun with AZPHP

On the AZPHP list Alex Dean wanted folks to get involved in creating obfuscated PHP code and everyone trying to figure out what it does. The first example was quite easy to figure out but Alex posted one that was quite the interesting piece.

Continue reading "Obfuscated PHP fun with AZPHP" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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