Archive for the ‘Flex’ Category
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11
Mar
2009
AMFPHP + Flex 3 = Error [unable to open 'services-config.xml']
While trying to configure the AMFPHP set up with the Flex 3 framework I ran in to a problem while setting up the services-config.xml.
I’ve created the file in the root directory and specified in the Flex Compiler [Additional compiler arguments] the following string -locale en_US -services “services-config.xml”.
As soon as I clicked OK an error popped up with a message unable to open ’services-config.xml’. After trying varying things I was able to figure out that the problem was with the location of the file. Simply placing the file at the root of the directory wasn’t the right location. I needed to put the file in the same directory as the main MXML executable – after that the program worked as expected.
2
Mar
2009
Gumbo effects comming soon
Gumbo: the next release of Adobe Flex SDK interface will has some interesting and useful features. The idea of developing custom controls [like buttons or menues] which slide in and out based on mouse interaction can be problematic to build. The logic of incomplete slide ins and slide outs along with the gittery screen can cause the application to look unpolished.
All of this is about to change as you can see in this video describing the new sequence functionality that will be available in the next release. Have a look at the more complex sequences.
PS: seems that the new release will be hitting the shelf sometime in the second half of 2009.
2
Mar
2009
Adobe Flex online tutorials
A great collection of tutorials for anyone who is interested in learning how to work with Adobe Flex. The lessons cover everything from the basics of Flex Builder to more complicated topics like building run time shared libraries. Have a look and learn something new.
2
Feb
2009
xCelsius: a half baked solution
Before I begin let me just say that I am a big supporter of what Adobe has done with the Flex application. As a result I’ve tried to be un-biast and explicit about my opinion.
I have a few concerns regarding a new product xcelsius. Despite impressive results there are fundamentals shortcommings that will become evident while working with the application.
- Flexibility
- The product is designed strictly to follow a particular approach. This methodology is quite unintuitive and requires the developer to put additional effort when designing the model. The structure is rigid and sometimes confusing. Most of the time it feels like you are trying to create a workaround forcing the intuitive solution in to the Xcelsius model.
- Functionality
- Overall the product looks like a 1/2 backed solution. It is an implementation that is driven by the components provided with the standard load [some are not sufficient in terms of what is expected from a developer's point of view]. The platform is designed to rely on Microsoft Excel but lacks capability to take advantage of basic Excel advantages [like Visual Basic enhancements], the solution is restricted to support only a handful of Microsoft Excel functions/formulas.
- Maintainability & Support [This I believe is a major issue going forward with this solution.]
- The application has no debugger.
- Everything is linked to a Excel cells which can have complicated formulas. IE: cell A references cell B that references C which sums cells D through E which in it self point to cell F.
- During the training we’ve agreed that we would want to call the database to load information directly. This would eliminate the above mentioned complicated point. But still – the developer will be left with a BLANK spreadsheet where one would have to guess where and how the cells are referenced. In laymen’s terms: try figuring out where Matrix!$D$21:$O$21 is coming from.
Overall this is just another attempt to market Adobe’s ability to present data, an attempt that failed miserably.
23
Jun
2008
Adobe Flex Builder 3 short dump [JVM terminated. Exit code=1...]
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I was using Adobe Flex Builder 3 [AF3] for a few weeks now. I like what has been done with the application, the new functionality is very useful and there is a ton of new options that can be configured while designing your applications. Unforchunately similarly to it’s predecessor there are major bugs in AF3. A week ago for no apparent reason the application stopped working. Every time ran the application it threw a short dump before initializing the EDI. |
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I’ve tried reinstalling the application and even removed the old versions of JRE references. Nothing helped and just as before I had to rely to googling and looking at configuration files.
The problem lied in the small FlexBuilder.ini file located in the root installation directory. The contents of the file included the following settings:
-vmargs -Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:PermSize=64m -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
I’ve modified the contents to exclude the last lines and vuala, the application went back to it’s usual state [sure I lost all my projects but its nice to have a working EDI once again].
9
Dec
2007
Cyrilic integration of Flex and PHP
A recent project involved integration between a PHP content management tool like Joomla and Adobe Flex 2. I wrote a PHP script that parsed a MySQL database creating an XML structure that was then picked up by a HTTPService in a Flex application.
The information in the database was stored in Cyrillic format, hence when ever I was loading the data in to the SWF compiled file the end result was a collection of garbage data. Setting the actuall HTML to Windows-1251 encoding did not help the situation.
My following approach was to locate a native functionality within the Flex architecture to mediate the situation. Unforchunately I wasn’t successful in aquiring sattisfying examples to solve the problem. For that matter it became sadly obvious that I haven’t seen any flash pages using non/english alphabet [either I haven't been checking international sites that much or Adobe Flex isn't widely used overseas] .
My third approach was to look at the actual php code that was generating the XML structure. I’ve discovered a useful function mb_convert_encoding that eventually solved my problems. Using a simple snippet of code:
mb_convert_encoding($string_to_convert,'UTF-8','Windows-1251');
I was able to convert the data from UTF-8 in to Windows-1251 which allowed me to display the desired Cyrillic characters.
20
Jul
2007
Flex Builder 2 Crash
Don’t you hate it when you try to get back to the project that you just been working on and all of a sudden the main application doesn’t start? In this case I am talking about the Adobe Flex Builder 2 which crashed on me about ten minutes ago.
Similar event occurred a while back, I came home attempted to open Adobe Flex Builder and witnessed a crash before the program started.
The message: “Error: An error has occurred. See error log for more details.” flashed before my screen four times followed by a convenient reference to the log file: An error has occurred. See the log file ../../My Documents/Flex Builder 2/.metadata/.log.
Typically after examining the log file and discovering a long list of Java java.lang.NullPointerException error messages
!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2007-07-20 10:55:52.296
!MESSAGE Bundle update@plugins/com.adobe.flexbuilder.debug.e32_2.0.155577/ [70] was not resolved.
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.osgi 2007-07-20 10:55:52.296
!MESSAGE Missing required bundle org.eclipse.debug.ui_[3.2.0,99.0.0).
I did the next best thing and Googled for more information. Sadly the search engine results did not come in handy and I fixed the problem by simply reinstalling the application.
Unfortunately as mentioned above a similar incident occured about fifteen minutes ago. This time around I didn’t feel like uninstalling the program and decided to fiddle with the application my self. Here are my findings:
Sollution:
1) Quick and dirty:
Go to the .metadata/.plugin directory and rename it to something different. This action will remove the metadata settings that eclipse stored but you will be able to run the application freely again. To get your data back simply perform an import operation for each project that you had in your Workspace.
2) More detail:
Go to the .metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime directory. Open the com.adobe.flexbuilder.standalone.prefs file and modify the line flexbuilder.afterFirstLaunch=true. The end result contents of the file should look like this:
#Sat Jan 10 00:12:04 PDT 2005
flexbuilder.afterFirstLaunch=false
eclipse.preferences.version=1Save the file and try opening the application again. This should fix the problem and get you back on your feet. I hope this helps those of you who run in to this problem.
