Tom Cornilliac

I recently started my first Flex 4 project using the Swiz framework. After setting up my main application class to use SwizConfig and compiling I was greeted with this error.

“In initializer for ‘mxmlContentFactory’, type org.swizframework.SwizConfig is not assignable to target type Array or target element type mx.core.IVisualElement”

The solution: Flex 4 introduced a new method of grouping non-visual elements together <fx:Declarations>. In Flex 4 non-visual elements such as formatters, validators, effects etc. need to be grouped within a <fx:Declarations> section. So if you’re using Flex 4 (Gumbo) your SwizConfig would look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:WindowedApplication
	xmlns:swiz="http://swiz.swizframework.org"
	xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
	xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
	xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo">
 
	<fx:Declarations>
		<swiz:SwizConfig 
			viewPackages="com.myapp.views"
			eventPackages="com.myapp.events"
			strict="true"
			beanLoaders="{[Beans]}" />
	</fx:Declarations>
 
</s:WindowedApplication>

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.

I was reviewing Engadget’s coverage of Demo 08 this morning and I nearly fell out of my seat when I saw skyfire. skyfire is a mobile browser that claims to bring a PC browsing experience to the mobile phone for the first time.

Read more…

For my last AIR project and my current Flex project I’ve been using the PureMVC ActionScript framework. It’s a solid framework and on the whole I’m enjoying working with it. When using PureMVC for Flex and AIR development one of the questions I see consistently is how to create mediators for deferred components. In other words, if the view of your app uses a view stack how do you handle creating mediators on the children of the viewstack that are not created yet? Read more…

The fine folks over at 360 Conferences are soliciting our input to help shape the future of the 360 Flex conferences. If you’ve ever been to a 360 Flex or if you’re simply and opinionated conference attendee please take a minute to complete the short 3 question survey.

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″.

I just arrived at 360 Flex (I’m in room 1209) and I’m going over my schedule for the conference. The session topics and speakers are outstanding and I’m having a hard time deciding. Of all the great sessions one in particular stands out to me and I want to point it out here; it’s “Practical Patterns in Flex” by James Echmalian.I’ve had many a Flexy conversation of the last few years and the topic of Design Patterns seems to come up regularly. There’s a real need for knowledge when it comes to implementing design patterns in Flex so I’m happy to see this session on the schedule.

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…

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?