Tom Cornilliac

Earlier this week I discovered a keyboard shortcut that will crash Eclipse on Mac OS X Leopard. There’s a fix for the problem so I wanted to blog the solution for any and all that might stumble across this issue in the future.

To be clear, as far as I can tell the bug only affects Eclipse 3.3 running on Leopard, although you may want to test your Mac environment just to be sure.

The bug shows itself when you use the Open Resource shortcut (CMD+SHIFT+R) or the Open Class (CMD+SHIFT+T) shortcut, once you’ve selected your file or class Eclipse will crash. At first I thought that this was a Flex Builder bug, Adobe even has a bug filed for this exact problem but after more research it turns out that the bug is an SWT issue in Eclipse.

Thankfully Eclipse has already resolved this issue in the 3.3.2 stream build so if this is an issue for you then download the 3.3.2 stream build and update your existing Eclipse installation. I’ve tested Flex Builder 3.0 plugin final on 3.3.2 and it appears to run without issue. If you’re running Flex Builder 3.0 standalone then you’re out of luck, download the plugin.

The title says it all. Here’s some links to the bits.

Flex Builder 3.0
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Flex SDK 3.0
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK
AIR 1.0
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Edit: In a comment below Ted Patrick confirmed that Adobe has indeed already changed the licensing to allow for a virtualized Win/Mac combination. Fantastic News! One more reason to develop on a Mac! (02/08/08 11:42 PST)

I develop Flex and AIR applications in Flex Builder on my Macbook Pro notebook and I keep a copy of VMWare Fusion and Window XP on standby for testing.

Last week while debugging an AIR application I came across a NativeMenu problem that required me to set breakpoints inside the Windows specific section of the NativeMenu code. No problem, I fired up VMWare Fusion, started Windows XP, installed Flex Builder 3 beta 3 and imported the project from my Mac partition. It all worked very slick and I was able to debug the problem and code a solution from within Windows, all without making a copy of the code base.

It all sounds so good and efficient right?

But later as I was basking in the glory of my victory, I got to thinking…this won’t be possible once Flex Builder 3 is released because I won’t have a Windows license key for Flex Builder 3. Will I need to spend hundreds of dollars for a Windows license key just so I can debug the occasional AIR application? What about when Linux support is a reality? Hundreds more?

The short answer may be “Yes”, pony up the cash and move on ya whiner!

But there’s a larger question at the root of this issue. Does Adobe as the provider of a freely available cross-platform runtime have an obligation to it’s developers to provide an equivalent platform for developing and debugging across all the supported platforms? In my opinion they do, it’s in Adobe’s best interest long term. Being able to debug AIR applications on Windows, Mac and (looking forward) Linux will only improve the quality of AIR applications and that in-turn should promote adoption of the platorm.

Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting that Adobe give away the IDE farm, I am suggesting that Adobe needs to consider the developer faced with challenges of cross-platform debugging in AIR. How does the developer who cannot afford a Windows, Mac & Linux IDE affect the platform as a whole? In my opinion the AIR applications we create (free or not) are public ambassadors for the platform, as such we need them to be stable and performant across every platform the AIR runtime supports. To accomplish this we need reasonable access to tools for each platorm.

So here’s my suggestion Adobe, it’s simple. Make the Flex Builder Professional license cross-platform. Let your developers make a choice for cross-platform debugging.

Eclipse Fast View is a very handy feature that enables docking and undocking of Eclipse views. If you consistently find yourself looking for more room in Eclipse then Fast View is for you. The screencast after the jump demonstrates Fast View in action.  Read more…

Ted Patrick, during the 360 Flex keynote, announced that the next Flex 3.0 beta will be available in October. While he didn’t go so far as to specify when in October I’m hopeful that the timing will coincide with MAX. In addition Ted announced that Flex 3 and AIR will ship in parallel sometime “very early in 2008″.

Creating an AIR express install badge is relatively simple. Adobe has done all the heavy lifting for us, our part consists of a little prep work and configuring some Flashvars. It is our part that I want to focus on in this tutorial.

What you will need to create a badge:

• AIR SDK (Freely available from Adobe Labs )
• Image editing software
• Flash Authoring (only if you want to modify the default badge)
• Your favorite text editor or IDE

Read more…

If your web server refuses to serve-up your shiny new AIR app, the problem just might be the MIME type or lack there of.  Mike Chambers posted on this topic awhile back and I bumped into it again yesterday (how quickly we forget!) so I thought I’d blog it for my own sake and yours.

The correct MIME type for AIR apps is:

application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip (sheew that’s a mouthful!)

Consult the documentation of your preffered web server for instructions on setting MIME types.

Let me preface this by saying I’m a typical guy, I don’t read a lot of directions, especially beta directions. I’m usually too darn excited to play with whatever the new toy is. All this is to say what I’m covering here might well be documented somewhere. I just haven’t found it yet.

I was wandering around Flex Builder 3 today (6/11/07) and noticed that my beta copy expires in 29 days. At the time I didn’t know whether to be excited at what the short time span implied or disappointed at the short beta. With a 30 day beta window I would hesitate to give Flex Builder 3 a serious run.

Not to fear though, if you enter your Flex Builder 2 serial it will extend your trial out another 112 days for a total of 142 days from the day you install. Just in time for beta 2 maybe?

I’m more than impressed with the Apollo Camp schwag bag. First of all I wasn’t expecting anything other then Apollo Alpha 1. Here’s what we received:

• Apollo Camp t-shirt
• Nice little Apollo  Camp sticker (I think I’ll put it on my MBP
• Lynda.com Apollo training DVD by none other than Mike Chambers
• Of Course Apollo Alpha 1
• AND THE BIG ITEM…A FULLY LICENSED COPY OF FLEX BUILDER 2 WITH CHARTING!

On the way into the Adobe offices they asked us Windows or Mac and handed us our copy of FB. The guy in front of me said “This is a demo right”. When the gal said no, I was blown away. Thanks Adobe! I’m deeply impressed. Gotta go the keynote is about to start. More later.

Maybe I'm missing something here (I sincerely hope I am). After reading Ben's post on the new CF Demo I was all fired up to try it for myself. This is the greeting I received when I attempted to run the plug-in. 

 

My heart sank with disappointment.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm not purposely trying to be an ungrateful complainer. I'm very happy to have FlexBuilder 2.01 on my beloved Mac. This is more of a desperate cry for help as I'm hoping someone out there can tell me I'm wrong and I need to do X and it will be fixed. Anyone?

If the ColdFusion/Flex Application Wizard is indeed Windows specific then I can accept that because I'm sure that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Just in case anyone is curious about my environment, I'm running FlexBuilder 2.01 as an Eclipse 3.2 plug-in and  yes I disabled and uninstalled the old extension before adding the new one.