Flash Lite Components

Yesterday I posted a question about using Flash components in a Flash Lite app which it turns out you can't do. Alessandro was kind enough to reply with a link to some Flash Lite specific components. Since I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem I thought I'd repost his link on the front page here.

Flash Lite Components

Jesse Warden is also working on a "light weight" set of components for Flash Lite. Keep an eye on his blog for details.

Flash Lite Question

Over the weekend I was working on one of my first Flash Lite prototypes. I got it working nicely in the emulator and when I got into the office this morning we tried testing it on the actual device (Q phone) and got and "Actionscript Stuck" error. After a little research it looks like this happens if you use any of the Flash components. My app currently uses one datagrid and an xmlConnector. I could probably work around the connector component but I'd really like to keep the datagrid if possible. Has anyone found a work-around for this?

Apollo on TechCrunch

Apollo was one of my favorite things at MAX this year. I'm very excited for it to be released, it's nice to see that people outside the Adobe developer family are excited too.

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Preparing For Apollo

MyBlogLog

A friend of mine told me about this site today. It's kind of like MySpace or Facebook for blogs. It's kind of interesting. I don't know how much I'll use it but it does have some good reporting about who's viewing your site.

MyBlogLog

Flex 2 dateChooser Component

If you've done much work with the dateChooser component in Flex 2 you know that it can be a little restrictive. I was recently working on an app where I wanted to load a list of dates from an XML file and somehow identify that those dates were clickable on the calendar. Turns out the only way to do this is to disable all of the other dates. I ended up dynamically building an array of start and end dates to pass to the disabledRanges method of the dateChooser component. The code is below. This may be obvious to many of you but it caused me a great deal of pain, one important thing to note is to be sure that the elements of your array are Date objects, not strings. Strings won't work....believe me.

The only input for the function is an array collection containing the dates that you want ENABLED.

private function setValidDates(validDates:ArrayCollection):void{
var rangeArray:Array = new Array;
var millisecondsPerDay:int = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24;
for(var i:Number = 0; i < validDates.length; i++){
var startIndex:Number;    
if (i > 0){
startIndex = (i-1);
} else {
startIndex = i
}
var startDate:Date = new Date(validDates[startIndex].getTime() + (1* millisecondsPerDay));
var endDate:Date = new Date(validDates[i].getTime() - (1 * millisecondsPerDay));

if(i == 0){
 rangeArray.push({rangeStart:new Date("Jan 1 1906"),rangeEnd:new Date(endDate)});
} else if(i != validDates.length && i != 0){
 rangeArray.push({rangeStart:new Date(startDate),rangeEnd:new Date(endDate)});
}
}
startDate = new Date(endDate.getTime() + (2*millisecondsPerDay));
rangeArray.push({rangeStart:new Date(startDate)});

myCal.disabledRanges = rangeArray;
}

***UPDATE***
I received a comment recently asking for a sample of the XML used in the example above. I've included a snippet here.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<calendar>
 <calItem>
  <date>1/7/2007</date>
  <milestone>Dad's Birthday</milestone>
  <time></time>
  <location></location>
  <notes>Don't forget to pickup the balloons and the cake at the store before 5:00 on Friday.</notes>
 </calItem>
 <calItem>
  <date>12/6/2006</date>
  <milestone>Christmas Party</milestone>
  <time>7:00pm</time>
  <location>The Wave Room</location>
  <notes></notes>
 </calItem>
</calendar>

YouTube Going Mobile

Another exciting advancement on the mobile front from Verizon.

BBC NEWS | Technology | YouTube moves to the small screen

Valleyschwag 2 Pic

So here's what came in my first shipment from Valleyschwag...not bad. I can't wait to see what next month brings!

  

My First Valleyschwag Shipment!

So yesterday I received my first shipment of goodies from Valleyschwag. I was qutie excited (I've always been a sucker for schwag). It came with some pretty cool stuff and of course the signature Valleyschwag burlap bag. The highlight was probably the MoveableType t-shirt and wrench. I'll try to post a couple of pictures soon.

MS 150

I decided to join the office team in the MS 150 bike tour this year. I realize most of you don't know me from Adam but if you'd like to pledge me and support a teriffc cause I'd certainly appreciate it. Just click the link below and search for Tim Todish. Thanks!

Epledge

Tabs Launched on Netvibes

I saw a post earlier in the week about this being in beta but it appears that they have added it to the live site now. Very cool :)

Netvibes

gotoAndLearn()

With my buddy Joe leaving to go to knoware last week I've had to dive back into the world of Flash development -- I've been away for a while :(

Anyway, I stumbled accross this site last week while searching a forum, gotoAndLearn.com. It is a great resource of easy to following Flash tutorials done with Flash Video. Perfect for someone like me who learns best by watching someone else.

New Davinci Code Trailer

I'm sorry, I know it's off topic but I can't help it. May 19!

Da Vinci Code

Survey Management RIA

We did a soft launch of my first major Coldfusion project yesterday. The app is a complete survey management tool that covers everything from survey creation to reviewing survey results in a Flex dashboard. Unfortunately it's an internal app so I can't post an example but I think we are going to be genericising the content so hopefully we can move it to a public site sometime soon. In the meantime I'm going to put together a small case study that explains some of the key features including data transfer between our internal corporate network and our external data center, integrated Windows authentication etc....

Quick overview of the app:
1. A user visits the survey starter app to initiate a survey. (Coldfusion)
2. A survey is created and sent to a specific client. (Coldfusion)
3. The client recieves and email, clicks a link and takes the survey. (Coldfusion)
4. The data is transfered back to our internal network via BizTalk and a CF web service. (Coldfusion)
5. The person who initiates the survey recieves an email telling them that the survey is complete with a link to view the results in the dashboard. (Coldfusion & Flex)
6. Based on their permission level the user can view results of their own survey(s) and the surveys of people who report to them. (Coldfusion & Flex)

Another Cool Personalized "Desktop"

A few days ago I did a post about Netvibes which is a slick Web 2.0 welcome screen that you can customize with your favorite feeds, gmail etc...

Recently someone suggested I take a look at Pageflakes. At first glance it looks very similar to Netvibes with much the same functionality. The one thing that really popped out at me though were the tabs at the top of the screen that allow you to setup different views and/or categorize your "flakes." These are a great feature and might just be enough to make me switch from Netvibes.

Netvibes

Netvibes was listed as one of the top Web 2.0 apps of 2005. Many of you have probably already seen this but for those who missed it like I did, I thought I'd post a quick link.

Netvibes is a dashboard style page with pods you can customize with your own content. You can keep notes, view your Gmail, keep an eye on various feeds, do web searches etc... This can all be achieved without the hassle of having to create an account. Of course, if you want to be able to view your page from multiple computers, an account is required.

netvibes

U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications

I can't believe this would ever be able to be enforced but it could cause some serious headaches for people until it gets sorted out.

InformationWeek | Pateents | U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications | February 22, 2006

CF Eclipse Tutorials

I'm just finishing my first major CF project. I built it using Dreamweaver 8 and Flex Builder 1.5 mostly. I'd like to give CF Eclipse but I don't know much about it. I was wondering what advantages (if any) does it have over Dreamweaver, and are there any good tutorials on how to use it out there. Anybody have any ideas/suggestions on this?

9 must have Firefox extensions for web developers

"Engadget's CSS blog lists 9 Firefox extensions that anyone who works with web technology should check out. Some you might have heard of already, others you may not."

read more | digg story

Coldfusion and Windows Integrated Security

The project I'm currently working on resides in two locations. One inside our corporate firewall for users to setup a survey and a second outside our firewall for users to actually take the survey. For the internal piece we wanted to be able to identify the user based on their Windows login information so they did not have to log-in a second time.

It took a little searching but once I found what I was looking for it was actually quite simple to implement. First off you need to disable anonymous access to the directory containing you web site in IIS and then enable Windows Integrated Security. Once that is in place you you can use the CGI environment variable AUTH_USER to grab the username of the user currently logged into the machine in the domain\username format.

Final Launch: OMNOVA Solutions - Design Center

We finally launched the last phase of the OMNOVA Design Center last week. It was a long and sometimes bumpy road but in the end I think we came up with a very good app. The final launch includes five more product lines and a few usability tweaks. You can check it ou at the link below.

OMNOVA Solutions - Design Center

Nokia with Macromedia Flash Player - Gizmodo

Could this be one of the first Flash enabled phones coming to the States?Probably not, but we can hope....

Nokia with Macromedia Flash Player - Gizmodo