I like to spend the first hour or so of my day reading up on the latest Flex Blogs. Anytime I find a blog or an interesting post I add it to my collection.  I can’t count how many times I had a problem to be solved and had come across the solution just that morning or a couple days before.

If you want to see my Google reader Feed (a feed of all the feeds I read) click here.  Another great place to start is Feeds.Adobe.com where you can create your custom feed of Adobe related blogs.

Here is a list of interesting sites and reads that I have collected over time all relating to Flex.

· Flex

· Cairngorm

o Source of HTTPService_Cairngorm22_Example

o Caringorm Explained Diagram

o Presentation Model

o Razor Sharp Design » Roll your own Dependency Injection

o Flex :: Cairngorm

o CairnGen

o Cairngorm with Dependency Injection (Part 1) » activepoison.com

o Source of binding-selectedchild-of-a-viewstack-in-mvc

o Binding the selectedChild of a ViewStack in a Flex MVC structure | Russ Back

o Cairngen with Cairngorm with UM Extensions | Axelology

· Components

o AutoComplete « Hillel Coren

o Coding Conventions – Flex SDK

o DataGrid

§ Dynamically add remove columns in a datagrid « FlexOut

§ Disable datagrid celledit

§ Flex Datagrid Edit Cell on Row Click

§ Tips & Tricks – ItemEditors – II

§ Tips & Tricks – ItemEditors – III

§ Tink » Blog Archive » AlignBottomDataGridItemRenderer

§ Adding Dynamic Rows To Flex DataGrid | Switch on the Code

§ Flex Data Management 02 – handling DataGrid input [en]

§ Disabling Certain Rows in Data Grid

§ Formatting a Flex DataGrid control using a custom item renderer | Flex Examples

§ Thinking About Item Renderers – Alex’s Flex Closet

§ Adobe Flex: Delete Row In DataGrid | Tech Tips Tricks

o Style

§ Flex 3.0 CSS Properties List

§ Farata Systems » Extending Flex Framework: Value-Aware ComboBox

§ 36 New, Cool Flex and AS3 Tools, Libraries and Components

§ Flex Component Lifecycle

o Constraints

§ Dynamically changing a components ConstraintRow and ConstraintColumn | polyGeek.com

§ Flex 3 Details – Enhanced Constraints – Flex Open Source Information and Bug System Instructions – Adobe Bug System Information

§ The Instantiator: A simple Flex utility class for more powerful skinning in custom components – Josh Talks Flash

§ A 3-state checkbox in an AdvancedDataGrid ItemRenderer « Rendezvous with technology

§ The Flex Component Lifecycle | Enigmatic Thought

§ The Pulsing Progress Bar

§ Flex Component: Confirmation Window with Count-down to Enabled OK » Russell Brown

§ Flex tip: make your UIComponents announce themselves | kahunaburger

o Effects

§ Shaking effect | RiaCodes

§ Barcode Scanner Support for Flex – InsideRIA

§ Flex Smart Combo (aka look ahead combo)

§ iCheckBox – iPhone style Switch component for Flex « My journey in the world of RIA

§ Flex BreadCrumb Navigator with Degrafa

§ Flex 101: Customize Scrollbars – InsideRIA

· ActionScript

o asx3m – Actionscript to XML

o Creating a component instance by class name in ActionScript 3.0 — Flex Examples

o Observer

o Observe

o Remote Object

§ Engin Yöyen » Sending ActionScript Object To Java

· Interesting Reads

o gskinner.com: gBlog: Types in AS3: ints not so fast, uints slow!

· Arrays

o Creating a strongly typed ArrayCollection – Russ Back

o Find all unique values from an array or collection | Blue Flex

· HTTPService

o Stubbing Flex HTTPServices

o Code on my mind: Flex: Problems reusing the HTTPService object

· Testing

o Adobe Flex PMD Violations viewer

· E4X

o AS3 E4X Rundown « dispatchEvent()™

· Explorers

o Flex Explorer « FlexOut

o Flex Power Tools: Explorers

o Easing Function Explorer

o Flex Style Explorer

o Download Flex 3 – Flex SDK – Confluence

· BitWise

o Using Bit-wise Math to Simplify Logic ::

· HashCollection

o Flex Bindable Hash « self halt

· Observer

o Source of DashboardIteration6

· PayPal

o Integrating PayPal Express Checkout with Flex and Adobe AIR | Adobe Developer Connection

· Excel

o as3xls – Project Hosting on Google Code

· Link Lists

o ActionScript 3 Toolbox | Lambda

· Flex builder Plugins

o The Flash Blog » Flash Snippets panel for Flash Builder 4

· Metatags

o Annotating ActionScript Classes with Custom Metadata + Simple ORM Framework for AIR

o Quietly Scheming » Blog Archive » Declarative Binding and Handlers through Custom Metadata (Flex demo)

o MetadataExample.html

· Binding

o Flex Tips – Using Bindable Metadata Events – Flex Developers & Development | flexdevelopers.com

· ASDocs

o brupp.com» Asdoc Documentation

· Ant

o ANT, mxmlc and SWC files » My Milieu of Musings

· Validation

o Validation in Flex with Hamcrest-AS3 – InsideRIA

· Flex Blogs

o Deep Dive Into Flash

o Digital Media Minute

o Eric Feminella – Rich Internet Application Solutions and Services

o Adobe Flash Platform blog

o James Ward – RIA Cowboy | Rich Internet Applications | Flex | Adobe AIR | Java | Open Source | Linux | Enterprise Software

o Alex’s Flex Closet

o Flexponential

o Doug McCune – Adobe Flex Developer

o InsideRIA | The premiere community site for rich internet application design and development

o The GLog (Geek bLOG)

o » Easy Form Validation and Submit Button enable-disable in Flex 3 Idle Together

o » Capture CTRL+N / CMD+N in Flex/Air/AS3 Idle Together

o allenmanning.com

o Adobe Flex – Russ Back

o Hillel Coren

o Flex Examples — Just a bunch of Adobe Flex Examples

o Flash / Flex / ActionScript examples (example source code) Organized by topic

o Flash Builder 4 « Sujit Reddy G – The Evangelist

Wouldn’t it be great if you could bounce your local tomcat server using Ant?

The guts of this come from here but as usual I did some tinkering with it to get it to do what I wanted.

<property name="tomcat.dir" location="C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat 6.0" />

<!--  ************************************** -->
<!--  **     LOCAL Tomcat Bouncing        ** -->
<!--  ************************************** -->

<target name="tomcat-check-status">
    <condition property="tomcat.started">
        <socket server="localhost" port="8080"/>
    </condition>
    <echo>Tomcat Started Status : ${tomcat.started}</echo>
</target>

<target name="tomcat-start" >
    <antcall target="tomcat-stop"/>
    <java jar="${tomcat.dir}/bin/bootstrap.jar" fork="true" dir="${tomcat.dir}" spawn="true">
        <jvmarg value="-Dcatalina.home=${tomcat.dir}"/>
    </java>
    <waitfor maxwait="3" maxwaitunit="minute" checkevery="500">
        <http url="http://localhost:8080"/>
    </waitfor>
    <echo>Server is now started.</echo>
</target>

<target name="tomcat-stop" depends="tomcat-check-status" if="tomcat.started">
    <echo>Stopping the Tomcat Server if it has started</echo>
    <java jar="${tomcat.dir}/bin/bootstrap.jar" fork="true" dir="${tomcat.dir}">
        <jvmarg value="-Dcatalina.home=${tomcat.dir}"/>
        <arg line="stop"/>
    </java>
    <waitfor maxwait="3" maxwaitunit="minute" checkevery="500">
        <not>
            <http url="http://localhost:8080"/>
        </not>
    </waitfor>
    <echo>Server is now stopped</echo>
</target>

<target name="tomcat-bounce" description="Use this to 'bounce' the local tomcat" depends="tomcat-start">
    <echo>Stopping server instance that was started through ANT so you can re-start through Eclipse</echo>
    <antcall target="tomcat-stop"/>
    <echo>Server instance should be stopped</echo>
</target>

I went about my normal business of starting up Eclipse and I could only get oh so far before I got into a staring contest with this screen. (It’s just the normal Eclipse Ganymede loading screen except I changed the splash image to be more appealing).

It said that it was loading so I decided to wait it out, after 3 or 4 times my normal wait it was obvious that Eclipse was not going to start up.

I remembered that I was in a rush to leave the previous night and I didn’t let Eclipse close down properly, apparently this was my punishment.

So I scoured the interwebs searching for  a solution.

I tried doing a –clean, to no avail.

I used a –consolelog to try and see what was going on but the only abnormal thing I could find was this little gem.

!MESSAGE The workspace exited with unsaved changes in the previous session; refreshing workspace to recover changes.

This message led me to this blog where the solution was lying in waiting.

Just delete the

{Path.To.Eclipse}\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources

folder. This causes eclipse to “forget” about your projects, but you can easily Import them back in.

Eclipse then opened up right away and all my settings were right where I had left them.

What would you say if the builder of your custom home said that he wasn’t going to be using a tape measure or any other sort of measuring tool? Like most people you probably would be looking for another builder. Same is true in User Interface design. There are so many times when you need to know how big a label, is how tall a control is, how much space is between these controls, math math math math.  You can’t do any of this math without the measurements and you certainly cant get measurements without a ruler.

Pixel Ruler 3.1 by Mioplanet

Pixel Ruler 3.1 is a great tool for figuring actually visualizing pixel measurements. It pops open for use in an instant, you use it on screen, then close it down. It’s a great utility application. Personally, I just press Alt-Space then type “Pix” then press enter and its there courtesy of Launchy.

Google recently released a plug-in for Internet Explorer that allows a user to view a webpage in Google Chrome but within Internet Explorer.
Lifehacker story here
Only downside is the website has to have a meta tag added to the webpage you want to view, this tells the plug-in to activate and view that page in Chrome.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

Well, it hardly seems feasible to add that tag to every page out there. Luckily Google added a backdoor to the party in the form of a prefix that can be added to any http website (non SSL).

cf:http://gmail.com

Now all we need to do is create a bookmarket to prepend the prefix and we are good to go.

GCF+

Just add this link to your toolbar and click view your current page within Google Chrome Frame.

Note: “These techniques may not be fully supported in future versions” says Google so take it for what it is.

Every couple of years or so I like to blow away the OS on my home computer and put on a fresh copy.  It runs much faster and I filter out any one time use software and am left with just the core software I need on a day to day basis.

There are programs that I use that I simply cannot live without and I want to take a moment to share some of them.

Launchy

http://www.launchy.net/

Once you go Launchy you wont wanna go back. Launchy is a tiny application that runs in the background that you can call simply by pressing Alt-Space (or custom keyboard command). It pops up instantly and you just type in what application you want to go to. You can configure what programs get indexed and many other features. My favorite part about it is that you can type in a couple characters, then pause, and when the drop down presents with possible choices based on those letters and you select a program it remembers that shortcut.

Everything

http://www.voidtools.com/

I am not a big fan of the name of this application strictly because its such a common word that it makes it a little hard for the average user to find the application through a search engine. But man-oh-man can this thing find files and folders. You just give the app about a minute to catalog all the files and folders on your computer and BAM. You can now search for anything in a couple seconds. Words cannot describe how nice it is to find anything so fast.

If you want extra bonus points use this link to tie your Launchy directly into Everything.

http://lifehacker.com/5274774/integrate-everything-search-tool-and-launchy

Greenshot

http://greenshot.sourceforge.net/

We all have to send screenshots to someone at some point; if your still using Paint well… your probably not reading this blog. Greenshot is a very powerful open source screenshot capture utility that tints your capture region green to let you know exactly what you are capturing. It can automatically save the file to a directory, and copy the image to the clipboard, and a whole slew of other features. All in all a great application.