kuwamoto.org

NOTE: This code is not being maintained, and has not been tested against recent versions of Flex. Use at your own risk!

All code below is public domain. No attribution is required, and there are no other licensing restrictions.

Hi folks. I’ve made updates to the CompletionInput, Drawer, and Explode effects for beta 3.

CompletionInput: A fairly flexible auto-complete widget that also has a “mustPick” mode so that it can serve as a substitute for combo boxes.

• Fixed issues related to depth management
• Updated for beta 3

Drawer: A subclass of Panel that hides on the side of the screen until your mouse moves toward the edge. Drawers can be pinned open or ripped off the edge to become floating panels.

• Changed hiding heuristics so the drawer slides out of view when your mouse leaves the browser window.
• Made sure that floating panels are repositioned to fit within the screen if the parent container changes size.
• Updated for beta 3.

Explode: An effect that takes a bitmap copy of the target object and zooms it larger as it fades away. Comprehensive explanation of the code can be found here.

• Updated for beta 3.

NOTE: Requires Flash Player 8.5 beta 3.
[Demo – Autocomplete input]
[Source code – Autocomplete input]

[Demo – Sliding drawers]
[Source code – Sliding drawers]

[Demo – Explode effect]
[Source code – Explode effect]

One of our engineers, David Zuckerman, has cooked up an extension to Flex Builder that does quick fixes. Definitely worth checking out!

As you may have heard, Flex 2 beta 3 is out. Here are some quick tips for the new beta.

Migration notes

There were a couple things that tripped me up during migration that you might want to watch out for:

• If you use states… the “target” property of the AddChild tag has been renamed “relativeTo”. Unfortunately, the “target” property still exists, but it now means something different. My suggestion is to do a search for AddChild and change “target” to “relativeTo” as one of the first things you do in moving to beta 3. If you forget to do this, you get a somewhat cryptic runtime error (“Cannot add a child that is already parented”) when you switch into that state.
• If you use trace… Don’t worry when it tells you that flash.util.trace is an invalid import. You no longer need to import anything to use trace.

Source code available for the framework

The most exciting news is that the framework source is now part of the beta distribution. You can use this to debug, to help you understand how components are created, and to serve as the basis for new components that you may want to build.

For most project types, debugging into framework source “just works”. Step into framework source just as you would with any other source code.

You can also navigate to the source by ctrl-clicking on a class name, method name, or MXML tag.

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I’ve always been interested in usability, and one of the fun things about Flex is that you can tweak and tweak your UI until you’ve satisfied your inner UI designer.

So I was playing around with the sliding drawer components recently, and it reminded me of two things: (1) Sometimes, good usability design is so subtle than you don’t notice it until it goes wrong, and (2) Fitts’ law is real, even though I’d previously dismissed it as a bit silly.

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Check this out:

http://jdj.sys-con.com/general/currentcover.htm