Post by Aron / Oktober 6th, 2009
I’m currently working with SOAP web services. While making adjustments to the classes of the wsdl Flex Builder class generator I discovered, that there is an easy way to decode / parse XML to VOs (value objects). The XMLDecoder inside the rpc package does the trick. I’m still confused why there are not more resources on the web regarding this topic but If you want to digg deeper, I strongly recommend reading these blog posts by Dominic De Lorenzo:
Flex 3, XML Schemas & automatic mapping of AS classes to XSD element definitions (Part 1)
Flex 3, XML Schemas & automatic mapping of AS classes to XSD element definitions (Part 2)
I’m not an XML pro and some things in his example I’m still not getting (namespaces in XML, yes well…). Also, his example is in Flex and I just wanted to have a basic example on how this could be useful for my work.
Read on ›
Post by Phil / September 27th, 2009
I just uploaded the new 1.01 version of our Apdev VideoPlayer to google-code.
We fixed/added some features some of you requested, like e.g.
- Volume button behavior changed
- VideoPlayer now fires events when the video’s play-state changes
- and some other minor changes…
VideoPlayer example: http://apdevblog.com/examples/apdev_videoplayer/
HTML-embed example: http://apdevblog.com/examples/apdev_videoplayer/html.html
We also updated the documentation.
So go and check it out: http://code.google.com/p/apdev-videoplayer/.
Or just download the new version directly: apdev-videoplayer-1.0.1
Post by Phil / September 24th, 2009
Some days ago Adobe released the spell-checking library called “Squiggly“. According to Adobe the library “allows you to easily add spell checking functionality in any Flex 3 based text control” – but because most of our projects are AS3 only, we decided to build a class which allows you to use the SpellChecker’s functionality with every normal TextField in Flash.
Unfortunately Adobe messed up the Docs of the library’s current version (BTW, why do we need to download it? every other doc is accessible online) – they are talking about Events and EventDispatcher where no Dispatcher can be found and not even one Event is fired. Great that Adobe releases such a tool but they should definitely try to get the facts/info/docs right! Otherwise it’s really hard for us developers to work with (and maybe improve) the tools they offer.
So here is the first version of our spell-checker for ActionScript 3 / FlashPlayer 9. Currently there is only error-highlighting, the other features will hopefully come within the next few days (suggesting and replacing words).
Try it for yourself …
Read on ›
Post by Phil / September 18th, 2009
Last week I wrote (see Flash frontend for Indexhibit CMS) about our flash-indexhibit-example.
Today I also uploaded the sources …
I cleaned up the code but didn’t have the time to write any detailed comments. So take a look at the source-code and if you should have any questions, just leave a comment and we’ll try and help you as fast as we can.
The startpoint into the example is the Index class. This is only a loader-class responsible for loading the Main class which initializes the pureMVC framework and starts the application. After that, we use the StartupCommand to setup the application’s model and access the Indexhibit database via our RemoteGateway and the server-side remoting service “Indexhibit“.
To make the data handling easier we have two kinds of value objects: ExhibitVo and ImageVo. The remote-service is delivering you an array of ExhibitVos which you can use to display every available project from your Indexhibit installation.
If you want to dive right into the code, we recommend that you have at least a basic knowledge of the pureMVC framework’s design and functionality. Otherwise it’ll be hard to understand how the example is structured/built.
Other scripts we used in this example:
Get the sources here: http://apdevblog.com/examples/indexhibit/apdev_indexhibit.zip
Cheers
ps: we’ll be heading to brighton tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait for a replay at least until thursday next week.
FOTB here we come :)
and watch out for our detailed report after we’re back from the beach.
Post by Aron / September 18th, 2009
Philipp and me have been using the PreLoader class as a Loader replacement for some years now. It loads asset SWFs more convenient and has some nice improvements over the usual Loader.
Key features:
- Works similar to the Loader class (although it’s not extending it)
- Allows only one loading process per time (integrated loading queue)
- Some nice enhancements
Download here
Find documentation
See a typical scenario
Differences to Loader
Post by Phil / September 11th, 2009
Hi there.
After working with different content management systems over the last few years – like Typo3, Joomla and even some custom made ones – I came across a very neat one called Indexhibit. It’s not like you can compare Typo3 to Indexhibit – except maybe that they both are called CMS – but many projects we did in the past required only a small kind of management system. And that is exactly what Indexhibit has to offer. It’s an easy-to-use CMS with the most common features: create categories, add projects to category, edit headline/copy, upload images, etc.
Read on ›
Post by Phil / September 8th, 2009
We’re proud to announce our first open source project: the Apdev Videoplayer.
It’s an ActionScript 3.0 script-only videoplayer that we’re releasing under the MIT license. So you can do with it whatever you want – change it, skin it or just tear it apart and use some snippets of our code. It’s up to you.
Read on ›
Post by Phil / September 8th, 2009
Last week Adobe released a nice tool called FlexPMD – it can help you and your development team to improve the quality of the code you generate by looking for common bad practices like i.e. unused or inefficient code.
To better understand how FlexPMD works and what it exactly does, have a look at “About FlexPMD”.
You can use default or custom rulesets to control what FlexPMD is looking for. With the Custom Ruleset Creator you can – guess what – create your own rulesets and check your code against these rules.
There are three ways to use FlexPMD with your projects:
- from the command line
- from Ant
- from Maven
Read on ›
Post by Phil / August 31st, 2009
Hi there … some weeks ago I blogged about my struggles with Flex and its built-in DataGrid. After some time of getting to know “my Grid”, I decided to refactor the previous example.
Read on ›
Post by Aron / August 25th, 2009
I admit, I was still a bit wet behind the ears when it came to working with XML in AS3 – never did more then getting some images for a slideshow or loading some config-stuff out of a tiny 6-lines XML document. I thought, working with XML in Flash is still some myXML.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue bulls**t.
For a recent project, I had the chance to actually dive into this E4X magic and do the tricks. And yes, although I would still prefer using everything as serialized AMF, working with XML in Flash makes sense … now. And it’s definitely fun.
Read on ›