• It can’t be too simple
• It needs to be unique

There are two main ways by which evildoers get your password: they try to guess it or they steal it. Choosing a complex password makes it far more difficult for your password to be guessed. Here’s a good site with instructions on choosing a password as well as a great xkcd comic on the subject.

The problem we’re now faced with is making sure it’s unique. Although you can probably trust Amazon to securely store your password the same may not be true of some other random site you use. If they get hacked (and they didn’t store your password encrypted) bad guys now have your email address and password and will try it on other sites. A good password is harder to remember than “1234″ so it’s clearly a challenge to remember a unique password for every site you use.

Here are two ways around this problem: You can use a tool which will store your password for you such as lastpass. Although they offer browser plugins to make entering your password easier you should keep in mind that this can be inconvenient when using a friend’s computer or Safari on your iPhone. The other option (which is especially useful for sites you rarely check) is to use a random string of characters and simply use the “forgot my password” feature when you need to log into the site.

One of the many great features we provide is the ability to create call flows to efficiently direct incoming calls. This tool provides a visual display of the call flow and allows the user to easily make changes.

• Demo

The application makes extensive use of my AutoComplete component, as well as the excellent Flare visualization library.

In my opinion this is exactly the sort of application where Flex excels. I’m hopeful that the Apache Flex project can help keep Flex as a leading choice for web-based enterprise applications for years to come.

Latest version

• When using the component as an item renderer the sizing is sometimes messed up
• Prevented a toolTip from appearing when selecting an item
• Resolved tab focus issue when using the component in a Flex 4 project

One other change in this release is that all private methods and properties have been changed to protected. Minor changes should no longer require using the sourecode.

Best,
Hillel

While there are a few possible causes, the post discussed how a lack of understanding of the Flex component creation lifecycle could be a possible culprit. While everything in the post is still technically accurate (for Flex 3) I find that I often just use bindings if I need to set a property of a child component.

So… here’s the fourth way to solve the problem (at least for simpler use cases).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">

	<mx:Script>
		<![CDATA[

			[Bindable]
			public var buttonLabel:String;
								
		]]>
	</mx:Script>

	<mx:Button id="button" label="{ buttonLabel }"/>

</mx:Canvas>

I realize this is pretty obvious to most Flex programmers, I just wanted to clarify for people who are new to Flex and are finding the old post.

Corner Radius

This is actually what inspired me to write this post. I’m a fan of rounded rectangles (add a vertical gradient and a drop shadow and you’ve got a classic Web 2.0 look). I’d expect this to do the trick.

<mx:Box backgroundColor="#888888" cornerRadius="8"/>

However, to make it work you need to set the borderStyle property

<mx:Box backgroundColor="#888888" cornerRadius="8" borderStyle="solid"/>

Hand Cursor

A similar example is when trying to show a hand cursor. I’d expect this to work.

<mx:Label text="test" useHandCursor="true"/>

However, you need to use the following

<mx:Label text="test" useHandCursor="true" buttonMode="true" mouseChildren="false"/>

SWF Caching

This is more of a Firefox bug, however if you rely on the browser to handle caching the SWF (and updating when a new SWF is created) you’ll run into problems in Firefox. The best solution I’ve found so far is to convert the html wrapper file into a PHP script (any scripting language should do). You can then add the following to the SWF name.

?checksum=<? echo md5_file("__SWF_file_name__") ?>

Binding

I’ve written about this before but it’s caused me enough trouble that it’s worth repeating. If there are null errors inside of a function used in binding the Flash player will swallow them. It needs to do that as binding expression will often have null errors (ie, if you bind to person.name and person isn’t yet set). However, this can be very confusing.

Copying Objects

A really useful function is ObjectUtil.copy(), it will make a deep copy of your object. However, in order to use it you need to first register any classes which your object is composed of. Here’s the code I use.

for each (var classRef:Class in [ Class1, Class2, etc... ])
{
	var className:String = getQualifiedClassName( new classRef()) ;
	registerClassAlias( className, classRef );
}

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak at the event last year. I had a great time, there were a ton of really talented Flex developers at the conference.

Here’s the blurb for my presentation:

Architecting scalable Flex applications using Parsley & Cairngorm 3: Requirements will always change, the applications we build need to be able to roll with the changes. This session will cover using the Parsley framework along side Cairngorm 3 best practices to build well structured scalable applications. Topics covered include the MVCS pattern, dependency injection and the presentation model, plus I’m sure some random Flex tricks along the way.

Hope to see you there

Latest version

Here’s what’s new:

• Full support for Flex 4: The component now supports Flex 4 100%. The demo has been rebuilt using the Flex 4 SDK
• Added allowEditingSelectedItems property: You can now enable making changes to items once they’re selected.
• Added delimiter property: When allowing the user to select multiple items you can now specify which character to use as the delimiter.
• Added clearSearchOnFocusOut property: This enables specifying whether the search text should be cleared on focus out
• Added clear method: Makes clearing the selection much simpler
• Better overall usability

In addition, I’ve also fixed a number of critical bugs:

• Fixed problems when binding to the AutoComplete’s values
• Fixed issue where setting selectedItem multiple times would fail
• Fixed problem where allowDuplicates didn’t works for objects
• Resolved issues when using with Validators
• Improved garbage collection performance
• Resolved issues when using an XMLListCollection as the dataProvider
• Does a better job handling invalid data
• Fixed issues related to using the tabIndex property
• Other bug fixes and tweaks..

Best,
Hillel

If you’re looking to understand how to architect your application I can’t recommend strongly enough reading the Cairngorm 3 documentation.

http://sourceforge.net/adobe/cairngorm/home/

The name is a bit misleading. Rather than being the next version of Cairngorm (which was the first major Flex framework) it’s a collection of best practices along with a set of libraries which guide developers to build scalable applications.

Here’s the blurb for my presentation

Flex in the Trenches – This session will cover a variety of topics to help you transition from a beginner/intermediate Flex programmer to an advanced one. Topics will include resolving common performance issues, making your apps look pretty, effective use of the Flex DataGrid/ItemRenderers, getting compilation times down, plus more…

Mihai Corlan, a Platform Evangelist with Adobe will also be speaking. His blog has an excellent list of Flex frameworks and libraries which is definitely worth checking out.

Best,
Hillel

• F11: Debug last launched
• Ctrl + Shift + R: Open Resource
• Ctrl + O: Quick Outline
• Ctrl + F7: Next View
• Ctrl + F8: Next Perspective
• Ctrl + Shift + L: Key Assist

Hope you find these useful,
Hillel