Virgin Airways seems to be trying to DV8 from the norm.  Power at every seat. Ethernet and USB at every seat with wireless broadband connection coming soon. Which is all very cool, but what takes the cake is their in-flight entertainment system. On top of the music, video and games (yes games) on the 9 inch touch screen, they have this very cool airborne social network where you can communicate with anyone on the plane via IM, chat room, sms, email, etc…

They also have this SuperFly Wednesday promo where everyone gets free drinks. I so can’t wait for them to start service to my home town. Finally an airline with an open mind and plans for innovating.

There is also a tutorial by Lee Brimelow, Adobe Platform Evangelist, that covers how to get started using Flash Player 10 (code name Astro).

The client loved the application with one exception. They wanted it to use Google Maps. Ugh! I managed to getting working but it was not fun. I also sent a request to Google to create an API.

Google has listened, because yesterday they released a Flex API. Where was it a year ago when I needed it. Google Code ActionScript API

I am in the process of moving all of my old posts to my new blog. So if you are looking for them, they are coming.

Using Flex does throw a couple of a curve balls at you, so I thought I’d go ahead and share the solution with you.

Let’s start with the basis. The UIComponent class has a property called focusManager which gets the FocusManager that controls focus for the component and its peers. And since all UI controls inherit from UIComponent, they all automatically have this property as well. This give you access to a couple of key methods and properties necessary to set the cursor focus to a specific control.
First, you need the setFocus( ) method. The argument to setFocus() is the id of the control you want the cursor to show on. Using just this method does set focus to the control and it highlights the control as well, but it doesn’t show the cursor. You also need to set the showFocus(). Sets showFocusIndicator to true and draws the visual focus indicator on the focused object, if any.

So the code might look like this:

If you run this application as is, you’ll notice that something is still missing… the cursor!

The second part of the solution is to set focus to the flash object in the HTML wrapper. This means that you have to edit the index.template.html file in the html-template directory of your project. It also means that you have to conjure up some of the old JavaScript and DOM stuff we used to do before Flex.
All you have to do is get the flash object reference from the DOM and invoke focus() on it. Place this code at the bottom of the script that loads the flash object.

So the code might look like this:

Because this file is a “template” we can use the variable, ${application}, for the application name.

The HTML page should now set focus on the Flex application and then Flex application will set focus on the TextInput control.

Now for the big “but”. This doesn”t work in Windows Firefox or Mac Safari. arrrgh!
But once you click on the SWF, it does set the focus. PS: these are know bugs in the browser

I just found a new open source project called FlexReport. It is said to address report layouts, multi-page reports and print preview.

You can find his sample application and source on the blog post.

Apparently, this guy has had the same problems as others.

The Denver Adobe Flex UG has been meeting for a year and a half now with great success. We have had great topics, great speakers and great involvement from the community.

We”ve taken the next step in expanding our community by revamping the website. We are using a free service from CollectiveX for group sites. It has almost all of the features we would like to have as a group and it’’s free. They also have a la carte services for low fees.

Our next meeting is Jan 8th, 2008 where we”ll have Jeff Barr from Amazon out to speak with us and show off some of the cool things Amazon is doing.

We also have a special Adobe AIR presentation on Jan 21, 2008. Adobe is preparing to launch their newest product that allows web developers to build desktop applications. This meeting should not be missed!

I look forward to seeing you all there.

Let’’s start with the built-in way to compile a CSS file into a SWF:
In Flex Builder 2.0.1, you will find a “Compile CSS to SWF” option in the context menu of a file in the Navigator view. It will only be enabled when the file is a CSS. Just set this option on each CSS file that you would like compiled with the application. You will notice that the compiled SWF will be automatically placed in the output folder for your project.

Gotcha: There must be an output folder defined for the project. If for some reason the project’’s output folder is the root of the application, say instead of bin, this feature will be disabled.

Okay, so now you have your CSS set to compile with the rest of your application automatically. Of course, you could do it manually from the command-line using the mxmlc, but why make things difficult.
Now you just need to load the style SWF in your application. This is done with the StyleManager class. I simply call “StyleManager.loadStyleDeclarations( ”blueStyles.swf” )” on some event to load the style SWF.

In my case, I start with something like this:

Then I can have a method that does nothing but load style SWF files.

And in the case above, I have it set to change the CSS when the user selects the theme color they want from a ComboBox. I got most of my ideas on how to implement this from the new Flex Store. You should take a look again if it has been awhile.

Note: Another little thing that I”ve gotten stuck on are skins. I”ve found that I had to keep my CSS at the root of my project so that I could get to skins that use a ClassReference.
ClassReference(”assets.skins.ButtonBarButtonSkin”);

In the end, the only files at the root of my project are the main application and the CSS files.

Nice!

UPDATE: For Flex Builder 3 they added a simple selection option that will include the source for you. Select from the menu bar Project > Export Release Build… And then in the dialog, check the box for including source and select the objects you’d like to include.

Thanks Jason for reminding me to update this post.