case
ADM Blog
9Jun/090

Flex Components Pack

list I've just started working on a set of Flex components which I call Flex Components Pack. I've only managed to make 11 components till now but I'm still working and have a lot of ideas on my to-do list. If any one of you is willing to help I would be very glad to get an extra brain in here. Just drop me a comment or something and I'll share the road-map and SVN path with you.

I've made a page where I will add tutorials, code examples and runnable demos as soon as possible, so check back soon. Till then, you can download the library and take a look.

Update:

(13/06/2009) - Added 5 more components. A simple but nice led light switch and 4 visualisation effects (EQTunnel, EQLine, EQWave, EQBars - winamp style). Just drag and drop the EQ on your app and it will animate any running sound inside your flash.

5Jun/090

How to clone (duplicate) an object in ActionScript 3

For a project I needed to clone an object of unknown type. And by clone I mean to create a new instance of that same type and then fill out all its properties (including getters and setters) to mirror the original object.

Thanks to a friend, I discovered the describeType function in AS3. But this alone will only take care of the copying part. To create an object of the same type as another one we use getDefinitionByName.

Although Flash reflection is pretty basic, with a little work it will do the trick.

Get the application files.

Here's the code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx :Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:local="*" creationComplete="init()">
</mx><mx :Script>
 < ![CDATA[
 
     import mx.controls.Alert;
 
     private var source:DataObject = new DataObject();
     private var cloneObject:DataObject;
 
 
     private function init():void {
 
         source.name = 'John Doe';
         source.howMany = 4.5;
         source.when = new Date(0);
         source.complexProp = new DataObject();
         source.complexProp.name = 'Name in sub-object';
 
         cloneObject = UtilFunctions.clone(source) as DataObject;
 
         Alert.show("Clone:\nname = " + cloneObject.name + "\nhowMany = " + cloneObject.howMany + "\nwhen = " + cloneObject.when + "\ncomplexProp.name = " + cloneObject.complexProp.name);
     }
 
     /**
 
      * describeType will produce this (for a DataObject instance):
      *
      * <type name="DataObject" base="Object" isDynamic="false" isFinal="false" isStatic="false">
 
           <extendsclass type="Object"/>
           <accessor name="isHandicap" access="writeonly" type="Boolean" declaredBy="DataObject"/>
 
           <variable name="howMany" type="Number"/>
           <accessor name="complexProp" access="readwrite" type="DataObject" declaredBy="DataObject"/>
 
           <variable name="name" type="String"/>
           <variable name="when" type="Date"/>
 
 
      *
      * */
 
 ]]>
 
</mx>

And the UtilFunctions.as file:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
package
{
 import flash.utils.describeType;
 import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
 import flash.utils.getQualifiedClassName;
 
 public class UtilFunctions
 {
 
 
     public static function newSibling(sourceObj:Object):* {
         if(sourceObj) {
 
             var objSibling:*;
             try {
                 var classOfSourceObj:Class = getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(sourceObj)) as Class;
                 objSibling = new classOfSourceObj();
             }
 
             catch(e:Object) {}
 
             return objSibling;
         }
         return null;
     }
 
     public static function clone(source:Object):Object {
 
         var clone:Object;
         if(source) {
             clone = newSibling(source);
 
             if(clone) {
                 copyData(source, clone);
             }
         }
 
         return clone;
     }
 
     public static function copyData(source:Object, destination:Object):void {
 
         //copies data from commonly named properties and getter/setter pairs
         if((source) && (destination)) {
 
             try {
                 var sourceInfo:XML = describeType(source);
                 var prop:XML;
 
                 for each(prop in sourceInfo.variable) {
 
                     if(destination.hasOwnProperty(prop.@name)) {
                         destination[prop.@name] = source[prop.@name];
                     }
 
                 }
 
                 for each(prop in sourceInfo.accessor) {
                     if(prop.@access == "readwrite") {
                         if(destination.hasOwnProperty(prop.@name)) {
                             destination[prop.@name] = source[prop.@name];
                         }
 
                     }
                 }
             }
             catch (err:Object) {
                 ;
             }
         }
     }
 }
}



5Jun/090

Create professional Flex components

Flex Builder has a great way to organize its components in tree mode, which is very a good way to organize things and make things clear to any user who are coming to Flex world.

By default, every component you create that is not part of default Flex components you will have placed in the [Custom] directory of Flex Components view in your Flex/Flash Builder, and no matter what properties you add to them, they will never be visible in the Flex Properties standard view.

But what if you want to customize that and create a component that have them all like flex components do? Well, it's not that hard so let's do that.

Create the Component

First, you have to create a new Flex Library Project. Do this by going to File->New and choose Flex Library Project. Give it a name, a location, choose whatever Flex SDK you wish to build this for and then click finish.

Now you have a blank library project in which you can create whatever components you want.
Is important to use packages correctly and namespaces and not just drop the component in the [src] folder (you'll see later why). First create a package (eg. com.adm.component) in which you can add your custom component.

package com.adm.component
{
      import mx.containers.Canvas;
 
      public class mycomponent extends Canvas
      {
      }
}

Okay, now let's create some methods to have something going. We'll make this component be a big button with a method to enable the button and one to change it's caption. We'll use setters and getter's for those properties because some other actions might be required when changing them. So:

package com.adm.component
{
     import mx.containers.Canvas;
     import mx.controls.Button;
 
      public class mycomponent extends Canvas
      {
            private var _title : String = 'Title';
            private var _active : Boolean = true;
 
            private var btn : Button = new Button();
 
            public function CustomComponent()
            {
                      super();
                      this.btn.width = 100;
                      this.btn.height = 100;
                      this.btn.label = this.label;
                      this.addChild(this.btn);
            }
 
            public function set title(val : String) : void
            {
                      this._title = val;
                      this.btn.label = val;
            }
 
            public function get title() : String
            {
                     return this._title;
            }
 
            public function set active(val : Boolean) : void
            {
                     this._active = val;
                     this.btn.enabled= val;
            }
 
            public function get active() : Boolean
            {
                    return this._active;
            }
      }
}

So, if you now build your project, a .swc file will be generated in your [bin] folder, which you can add in other projects and use. But now, the component will be placed in the [Custom] directory in the Components View and not the one you want. We'll do that a bit later now let's just....

Give it an icon

This is really simple. All you have to do is get a nice looking .png icon (16x16 pixels preferably) and place it next to your component. Then, use the IconFile metadata tag to link it to your component.

....
[IconFile("icon.png")]
public class mycomponent extends Canvas
{
       private var _title : String = 'Title';
       .......

Inspectable properties

If you have extra information about the property that will help code hints or the Property Inspector (such as enumeration values or that a String is actually a file path) then also add [Inspectable] metadata with that extra info. For our methods we have:

       ...
       [Inspectable(category="General", type="String", defaultValue="")]
       public function set title(val : String) : void
       .....
       .....
       [Inspectable(category="General", type="Boolean", defaultValue="true", enumeration="true,false")]
       public function set active(val : Boolean) : void

This will also help a lot when we'll add this properties in the Flex Properties panel. For more informations about the [Inspectable] metadata tag visit http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/docs/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001658.html

Create custom component folder

So, if you want to build a professional component, you can't leave Flex add your component in the default [Custom] directory in the Components tree. So, in order to create your own folder, we must use few tricks.

First of all, you need two .xml files to describe the structure you want flex to use and overide it's default behavior.
The first file is the manifest.xml which describes the components in the package and their namespaces. In our case we'll have:

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<componentpackage>
    <component id="mycomponent" class="org.adm.component.mycomponent"/>
</componentpackage>

Second, we need another xml to describe the way the designer will interpret all this.

< ?xml version="1.0" ?>
<design>
	<namespaces>
		<namespace prefix="adm" uri="http://www.adm.org" />
	</namespaces>
	<categories>
		<category id="Test" label="Test Panel" defaultExpand="true" />
	</categories>
	<components>
		<component name="mycomponent" namespace="adm" category="Test" displayName="Rename Me" />
	</components>
</design>

In the design.xml, you can specify the namespaces you used for the components, in this case adm will point to components in the org.adm folder.

Categories tag describes the folders you want added in the Components panel. Each category must have an id which you'll use to tell components where they should reside, a label for the category to stand as the directory name in the Components panel. defaultExpand is an optional parameter which if set to true, the folder will be showed expanded by default.

In the components tag, you specify which component goes in what category and under what title. The name parameter must match the id of a component listed in the manifest.xml. All the other parameters are pretty self explanatory.

Next, you have to include this two files in .swc package. To do that, follow the steps:

* Right Click at your project and select Properties
* In the left choose Flex Library Build Path
* Select the assets tab and mark to include manifest.xml and design.xml files
* Now select the Flex Library Compiler and include your namespace URL (in this case http://www.adm.org)
* Include the manifest file .xml you've created
* Click apply and ok to finish

design
manifest

After this, you should end up with something like this

comppanel

Add properties to the Flex Properties view

As I said before, no matter what properties you add to your component, they will never be visible in the Flex Properties standard view, only in the category view and that only if you use the [Inspectable] metadata tag. But few more lines in the design.xml file should take care of that.

	<component name="mycomponent" namespace="adm" category="Test" displayName="Rename Me">
		<mxmlproperties>
			<textfield id="title" name="Component Title:" />
			<combo id="active" name="Active:" />
		</mxmlproperties>
		<defaultattribute name="active" value="true" />
	</component>

The id of the mxmlProperties tag should be the function/variable names from your component you want to edit. You can also define default values for those properties using the defaultAttribute tag below. Here we've only used the textfield and the combo type but there are few more you can use.

<textfiled id="propertyOrStyle" name="Label:" [multiline="false"] />
<combo id="propertyOrStyle" name="Label:" />
<colorpicker id="propertyOrStyle" name="Label:" />
<filepicker id="propertyOrStyle" name="Label:" [wrapInEmbed="false"] />
<slider id="propertyOrStyle" name="Label:" min="0" max="10" increment="1" />

For combo boxes, if you use it for a Boolean property, it will automatically be populated with [true,false] values but if want something else, the [Inspectable] metadata tag has the enumeration property where you can define the properties from this combo.

flexprop

Another thing you must do in order to apply the values as soon as you change them from the properties view, is to set the functions/variables as [Bindable].

    ....
    [Inspectable(category="General", type="String", defaultValue="")]
    [Bindable]
    public function set title(val : String) : void
	....
	....
    [Inspectable(category="General", type="Boolean", defaultValue="true", enumeration="true,false")]
    [Bindable]
    public function set active(val : Boolean) : void
	....
	....

One more thing

Now, compiling this will give you a 300 something KB .swc file which is a bit large to distribute. The user will use this component inside a flex component so embedding all the libraries and SDK inside your .swc is useless. So the next step is to go to Properties->Flex Library Build Path->Library path tab, expand the build path library try and edit everything inside the SDK tree on Link Type and choose External

paths

Now the swc component only have 4KB. Big cut down, eh ?

Done

If this is to much trouble for you or you've missed something, I've attached the sources for this tutorial here. You can import this skeleton rename the package, namespace and the component and start building on this. I hope it all made sense and....happy coding.

17Apr/090

Install Windows XP on your Asus Eee PC using a USB flash drive

This method of running and installing a Windows from a USB flash drive works on all computers not just Asus Eee PC's.

To complete this tutorial you'll need:

- a 32bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista installed on your computer

- USB_PREP8

- PeToUSB

- Bootsect

- a Windows XP instalation CD or image

Extract all the zip archives, copy the PeToUSB content into the USB_prep8 folder. Inside the USB_prep8 folder double click the executable named usb_prep8.cmd

The window that opens will look like this:

Click to enlargePress any key to continue.

Your next window will look like this:

Click to enlargeThese settings are preconfigured for you and all you need to do now is click the Start button.

Once the format is complete, DO NOT close the window. Just leave everything as it is and open a new command prompt from your start menu (type cmd in the Run box)

Inside the command window, go to the directory you have bootsect.exe extracted and type (see note bellow first)

bootsect.exe /nt52 R:

Note: R: is the drive of my USB stick. Open Windows Explorer and see what letters yours is assigned to and change the command accordingly. When running the bootsect.exe command, you must close all windows/programs that are displaying/using the content of the USB stick to allow the boot sector writer to lock the device and write the sector correctly.

This part writes the correct boot sector to your USB stick and allows the pc to boot from the stick. Without this noting works.  If all went well with the command, you should see "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes"

Now you can close this command prompt and the PeToUSB window (but make sure not to close the usb_prep8 one by mistake)

The window you see now should look like this:

Click to enlarge

Now you need to enter the correct information for number 1, 2 and 3

- Press 1 and then enter. A folder browse window will open for you to browse for the location of your XP setup files (cd rom drive, mounted image or a folder somewhere on your system)

- Press 2 and enter a letter not curently assigned to a drive on your PC (try x or someting at the end of the alfabet)

- Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB stick

- And finally, press 4 to start the process

The script will ask you if its okay to format the virtual tempdrive (the one at step 2). This is just a temp drive the program creates and mounts to cache the windows installation files. You can safely press Y to continue

Once it's done formating, press enter to continue again, you can now see the program copying files to the temp drive it created. This will take a while (browse other articles from my blog till then :) ) but once this is done, press enter to continue again.

Next you will see a box pop up asking you to copy the files to USB drive (yes/no options). You want to click yes here.

Once the script has completed once again a shit long copying process, another window asking if you would like the USB drive to be preferred boot dive U:. select Yes on this window too.

Now select yes to unmount the virtual drive.

Ok we are done the hard part, close the usbprep8 window.

Now make sure your EEE pc is configured with USB as the primary boot device.
Insert your USB drive and boot up the EEE.

On the startup menu you have two options, select option number 2 for text mode setup.

From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS. Make sure you delete ALL partitions and recreate a single partition or you will get the hal.dll error message.

Once the text mode portion of setup is complete it will boot into the GUI mode (you can press enter after the reboot if your too excited to wait the 30 seconds)

Once the GUI portion of setup is complete you will again have to boot into GUI mode this will complete the XP installation and you will end up at you XP desktop. It is very important that you DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK before this point. Once you can see your start menu it is safe to remove the usb stick and reboot your pc to make sure everything worked.

This method has advantages over all current no cdrom methods of installing XP to the EEE. You do not have to copy setup files in DOS to the SSD and install from there. It gives you access to the recovery console by booting into text mode setup, and it gives you the ability to run repair installations of XP if you have problems later on.

I hope this worked out for you and please post feedback to the comments section.

xpinstall

3Apr/090

Right click and custom context menu in Flash/Flex


Anyone know you can customize your flash context menu with ContextMenu class. But what if you want to really get rid of that and use your on context menu or just use the functionality of the right button of the mouse ?

The idea is fairly simple:

1 - Use Javascript in the HTML container page to disable the right-click on top of the SWF.
2 - Capture the event and pass it to a function that communicates with Flash via the External Interface
3 - In Actionscript the function called from Javascript does whatever you need to display your own custom context-menu.

Why would anyone want to do this?

Well, there are several very important reasons:

1. Games – the power of AS3 has brought Flash to the world of digital entertainment. At last it is possible to focus on the idea of your game rather than on how to improve the laggy experience. One thing that is still missing – right click functionality. We had this forever in desktop games, now it is time to let your casual RTS, RPG and FPS creations conquer the web.

2. User Experience – 2 buttons are better than 1. Every experimentalist's dream is to be able to have more input options, not just one button. I can bet someone would soon create a stunning interface using this new functionality

3. RIA – Rich Internet Applications. My clients are often asking if it is possible to remove embeded Flash Player menus from their applications and replace them with their company’s branding stuff.

And the answer is : YES! You can hack it to use custom right-click functionality in Flash and Flex.

Here is the demo and because you won't be able to right click it to View the Sources :) here they are

Javascript source code looks like this:

var RightClick = {
	init: function () {
		this.FlashObjectID = "RightClickDemo";
		this.FlashContainerID = "flashcontent";
		this.Cache = this.FlashObjectID;
		if(window.addEventListener){
			 window.addEventListener("mousedown", this.onGeckoMouse(), true);
			 document.oncontextmenu = function() { document.getElementById("RightClickDemo").rightClick(); }
		} else {
 
			document.getElementById(this.FlashContainerID).onmouseup = function() { document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashContainerID).releaseCapture(); }
			document.oncontextmenu = function(){ if(window.event.srcElement.id == RightClick.FlashObjectID) { return false; } else { RightClick.Cache = "nan"; }}
			document.getElementById(this.FlashContainerID).onmousedown = RightClick.onIEMouse;
		}
	},
	killEvents: function(eventObject) {
		if(eventObject) {
			if (eventObject.stopPropagation) { eventObject.stopPropagation(); }
			if (eventObject.preventDefault) { eventObject.preventDefault(); }
			if (eventObject.preventCapture) { eventObject.preventCapture(); }
		    if (eventObject.preventBubble) { eventObject.preventBubble(); }
		}
	},
	onGeckoMouse: function(ev) {
		return function(ev) {
		if (ev.button != 0) {
			RightClick.killEvents(ev);
			if(ev.target.id == RightClick.FlashObjectID && RightClick.Cache == RightClick.FlashObjectID) {
                document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashObjectID).rightClick();
			}
			RightClick.Cache = ev.target.id;
		}
	  }
	},
	onIEMouse: function() {
        // stupid ie fix
        if (document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashObjectID + 'x'))
            document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashObjectID + 'x').id =  RightClick.FlashObjectID;
 
		if (event.button> 1) {
			if(window.event.srcElement.id == RightClick.FlashObjectID && RightClick.Cache == RightClick.FlashObjectID) {
				RightClick.call();
			}
			document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashContainerID).setCapture();
			if(window.event.srcElement.id)
			RightClick.Cache = window.event.srcElement.id;
		}
	},
	call: function() {
		document.getElementById(RightClick.FlashObjectID).rightClick();
	}
}

On the Flash side is as simple as this code (AS3):

private function init() : void
{
    ExternalInterface.addCallback("rightClick", onRightClick);
}
 
private function onRightClick():void
{
    var mx:int = stage.mouseX;
    var my:int = stage.mouseY;
 
    if(my > 0 && my < stage.stageHeight && mx > 0 && mx < stage.stageWidth)
    {
        // show a custom context menu or do someting here
    }

On Opera this will not work, the browser forces the context menu to appear and blocks mouse events by default.

Few things you shouldn't forget to make this work

- 2 extra parameters you have to add to the flash object in your html
menu="false"
wmode="opaque"

- add to the body onload event RightClick.init(); function

Note: If you download the sources, you'll see in the html that the "object" tag has an extra 'x' character in the id. that's important to make it work in ie.