http://www.hulstkamp.com andy hulstkamp blog about rich internet applications, flex, flash, java, webapps, web, code, experiments Sun, 31 Jul 2011 07:24:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I had a look at Google App engine and some of the new features in Spring 3 (MVC). I decided to create a platform for city ratings and –rankings. I polished the whole thing a bit in the hope to attract some visitors. I wonder if I can get some ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2011/04/12/experience-with-google-app-engine-spring-mvc-and-flex/613 Here’s a first version of a simple Ruler component that takes some of the techniques discussed in the couple of previous post into account. The ruler can be scaled down or up by holding CTRL/SHIFT while clicking and can be moved by holding the ALT-Key and keeping the mouse button pressed. ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/10/08/ruler-spark-component-using-dynamic-skin-parts-and-custom-graphicelement/584 Mobile Flex Apps are around the corner. Hence it might be a good thing to inspect some of the more light-weighted approaches of Flex to create visual elements and components that can take part in the Spark layout process. In this last example I had a look at SpriteVisualElement. Now, ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/10/07/inspecting-and-creating-a-custom-spark-graphicelement/570 This took me a while to figure out. In a project I created a custom PopUp, nothing fancy, just a couple of text inputs. When I tried to enable Tab key navigation I set the required properties but Flex would simply ignore tab key navigation to the input fields in the ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/10/06/flex-tab-key-navigation-for-custom-spark-popup/593 In Flex 4 the standard way to create a custom control is to extend from SkinnableComponent, then implement the handling and management of events and states there and use a separate skin class for the visual representation of the component. A class that gets less attention, but might be useful in ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/09/29/use-spritevisualelement-to-implement-a-simple-component-in-flex-4/555 Tooltips are a good way to provide a user with additional information for controls and Flex offers Tooltips out of the box. The default Tooltips are fine but when text gets longer than just a few words usability may suffer. For a current project, I needed more like a balloon help ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/05/30/nicer-tooltips-and-balloon-help-for-flex-4/525 During the past year I've posted a couple of custom Gumbo (flex 4 beta) components and skins. Since they've been built on beta sdks, these components might need some adjustments to work with the Flex 4 release sdk. To save you the work of figuring out what to adjust here are the ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/05/08/updated-components-to-flex-4-sdk-final/506 While updating the Gumbo-Components on this blog to flex 4 final I noticed that the style-property baseColor has been changed to chromeColor. In addition to this the flag useChromeColor can be set to tell the SparkSkin to use chromeColor for colorization. For custom skins this can be set by overriding initializationComplete() ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2010/04/07/flex-4-change-basecolor-to-chromecolor-and-usechromecolortrue/496 I was experimenting a little with the PopUpAnchor in Spark Flex 4 and came up with a new custom component for ratings. The new component has the following characteristics: Show a placeholder-icon that reflects the current rating and serves as an interactive element to open the ratings ratings pop up for adjustment both ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2009/07/09/custom-popup-rating-component-in-spark-flex-4-gumbo/464 For the past couple of days I've had a look at creating Spark Icon Buttons. In this post I've created an FXG Icon Button with some transitions, leveraging pseudo selectors for states. The Icon was 'hardcoded' into the skin. For another Icon I would need to duplicate the skin and ... http://www.hulstkamp.com/2009/06/20/advanced-fxg-spark-icon-buttons-with-one-generic-skin-in-flex4-gumbo/439