Archive for the ‘Adobe Catalyst’ Category
Help fix Flash’s visible dimensions
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe AIR, Adobe Catalyst, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex
Colin Moock, author of the excellent book Essential Actionscript 3.0 has written an interesting blog post regarding an issue which Flash (still) has with finding the visible dimensions of a DisplayObject. The key word there being “visible” as the way Flash currently reports a DisplayObject’s size does not account for things which effect on-screen appearance such as masking. For example if you have a 40×40 DisplayObject with a 20×20 mask the getBounds method, as well as the width and height properties, report the DisplayObject as being 40×40, which is technically correct, but Flash currently has no way of easily reporting the actual visual (masked) size.
Colin has raised this through the Adobe Flash Player and Issue Management System which I urge anyone with even a passing interest in Flash to go and vote for. This is your chance to help shape the future of the Flash player and resolve one of it’s most lacking features.
Flex Builder gets new name
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Catalyst, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Software
As expected Flex Builder has now been renamed to Flash Builder starting with version 4 due out later this year(?). Lee Brimlow broke the news and has answered a few questions people have regarding what this means for the future of the Flash IDE and how this may effect confusion between Flash & Flex.
Ultimately we need to remember that Flex is, and has always been, a framework. Flex Builder was named as such as it’s primary purpose is to build Flex projects though more and more people are now using it to build pure Actionscript projects. Personally I think the name change makes sense purely from a marketing point of view and it generally solidifies the Flash platform as a brand onto itself.
At the beginning of the year I had plans to learn the Flex framework though I have since decided to wait for version 4 to be released. My reasoning for this was I felt Flex 3 is still quite finicky when it comes to customizing the visual look of components. Flex 4 seems to be taking this issue as a primary design goal with a much improved separation between a component’s skin and logic. I’m still coding Flash using FlashDevelop for the time being but am very much looking forward to the release of Flex Buil… err… Flash Builder.
Flex in the new year
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Catalyst, Adobe Flex
So I’ve been pondering this for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to teach myself the Flex framework this year and move the bulk of my personal projects over to Flex Builder. I’ve been poking around in Flash CS4 for the last few months and while it’s new features are great it isn’t really up to snuff in terms of a development environment. Flash’s code editor has been the bane of most developers for some time now and with this release it’s pretty clear that Adobe aren’t planning on improving it any time soon, if at all.
I guess I can’t really blame Adobe. It is now very clear that they are purposefully splitting their Flash based products into different camps now that they have recently announced a third product, Flash Catalyst. From my interpretation of the videos and information Adobe are planning FC as almost a ‘designer front end’ to Flex Builder while providing enough auto-coded functionality to stand on it’s own. With Flex 4 (codenamed Gumbo) due out sometime this year I think it’s time to bite the bullet and learn Flex.
The good news is there is lots of free content available from Adobe on getting up to speed with Flex. I’ve been spending time lately watching a free video series over at the Flex Developer Center titled Flex in a week which can be watched through the Adobe Media Player on online. What’s really great about this is that it’s free! Eat that lynda.com!
Another excellent resource is the Tour de Flex AIR application. This app acts as an interactive reference to the components that make up the Flex framework complete with MXML examples and language reference.
