Flex Styling without the Flex (example and source)

Posted by Jacob Wright in ActionScript 3, CSS, FlexAug 31st, 2009 | 4 Comments Question: What’s 2.8KB, can style any DisplayObject on the stage, and enjoys long walks on the beach? Answer: Flex styling pwned! So it’s leaked out on twitter that Ben Stucki, Ryan Campbell, Tyler Wright, and myself are working together on a new RIA component initiative. Taking a different approach than Open Flux, we are starting from scratch and building up fresh. We’re bringing together what we’ve learned from Open Flux and Stealth with the goal to release finished features and stable builds. We hope to provide something that we all can use in production. We haven’t...

Using AMF as a file format

Posted by Jacob Wright in AIR, ActionScript 3, Applications, CSSAug 26th, 2009 | 8 Comments Flash is a great platform. You can build applications for the browser, the desktop, and… well, what else is there? When building applications, especially those with a document-based model such as the Aviary apps, Odosketch, My Canvas, ZenStudio, the apps on acrobat.com, and many others, you need a file format for the document or project. Or some way to save it. What Not To Do You don’t want to save each item into a table in the database. I know a guy…who had a dream…that his friend did this. This guy’s friend in his dream had a table for each item that needed to be...

Flex WISHED It Supported CSS

Posted by Jacob Wright in CSS, FlexJan 17th, 2008 | 8 Comments I was reading a post about the Top 10 Flex Misconceptions and read in the 2nd section that "Flex also uses CSS for styling of components / applications." I know since day one Adobe has listed CSS styling as a feature of Flex. But anyone who has used CSS to style a web page knows that Flex does not support CSS. It supports, well, SS. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Flex is missing the "Cascading" part of it. CSS is all about using a style sheet to describe the "presentation of the document" (World Wide Web Consortium CSS1). Because of the limited amount of the CSS standard that Flex supports,...

Dreamweaver and CSS Still Don’t Play Nice

Posted by Jacob Wright in Applications, CSS, GeneralSep 13th, 2005 | 2 Comments After hearing about the new CSS based workflow of Dreamweaver 8, which came out yesterday evening, I had high hopes that the rendering engine for CSS and HTML would have been improved. Disappointingly, this wasn't the case. Why don't they try using the rendering engines for Firefox, Safari, and even IE. The first two are now completely open for use and the latter would be smart to include even if there is a liscencing fee. mediaRAIN, my employer, uses Macromedia Studio because we specialize in Flash products. However, we do many HTML/PHP projects as well. Dreamweaver has always been a favorite...