Blog moved

I have consolidated all my blogs, both work and personal at  http://johnjwright.com.   Please visit there to visit my blogs related to EUI, Flex and AIR.

Filtering Code update

For those of you who are looking for the source code for the filtering controls you will find the source code for the examples below as well as HierarchicalBrowser, the itunes like browser.  The actual source code for FilteredCollectionView, CompletionInput is coming soon.   Andy Mcintosh and I are considering starting a project on FlexLib for this where we will release the components as great examples of clean components that use a Flex 4/Open Flux style of developing components.   Stay tuned.

Also, I will be moving my blog to http://johnjwright.com soon, so watch for that.

360 Flex Just Around The Corner

360 Flex is coming right up! I will be speaking at 360 Flex in Atlanta in a Custom Components session entitled “Building an ITunes-like Browser Component for Flex”. I am working on an internal project for Adobe with one of the best custom component developers in the business, Andy Mcintosh from EUI where I work, and he has created a few really cool components for the project. I will be presenting one of these at the conference, something very useful that every will be able to take back and use somewhere on a project that requires the use of large hierarchical data sets.And this just in for those sitting on the fence thinking about attending. According to Tom Ortega and John Wilker, the conference organizers, Adobe is planning on make a big announcement at the conference. This could be something very exciting related to Flex 4 or something we have not considered yet.

What you have not registered for 360|Flex yet?

360|Flex Atlanta, February 25-27, is the place to learn about Flex and AIR from
Adobe and community speakers. Included in the price of registration is a free
pre-conf, all day training session on Flex 101. We’re the premiere Flex and AIR
conference. $480 for one or $1500 for a 4-person team. Visit http://360flex.com.

Gotcha – Setting List selectedItem with large dataprovider

In the HierarchialBrowser I am working on and will be talking about at 360 Flex I was noticing a performance problem and found out that the culprit was setting a large list with over 40,000 item selectedItem to a string.  Apparentely this causes a long search across the list.  I changed it list.selectedIndex = 0 and that reduced the time down to about 10ms.  The gotcha is to use selectedIndex when possible on a large list and lookout out for cases when you failed to do so.

Gotcha – Importing Nested Managed classes

If you use are using Flex remoting, and you have a nested ArrayCollection, make sure that you compile the Flex VO class behind that ArrayCollection into your SWF by referring to it somewhere. Otherwise, you will ManagedObjectProxy classes instead of the concrete Flex VO type when Flex does the deserialization.

E.g. say you have a class like:

[Managed]
[RemoteClass(alias="com.adobe.watson.vo.ParentVO")]
public class ParentVO
{
public var notes:ArrayCollection; //holds NoteVO objects
}

And then NoteVO is declared as follows

[Managed]
[RemoteClass(alias="com.adobe.watson.vo.Note")]
public class NoteVO implements IValueObject

Somewhere in your code you need to have referenced NoteVO or it won’t compile into your SWF. Usually you will do this anyway because you will use notes but in cases like using data binding, perhaps you might not otherwise ever refer to NoteVO and in this case Flex won’t use it as the concrete class for the notes ArrayCollection and you might get unexpected results.

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Working in the Warehouse

EffectiveUI has moved its Denver location to a warehouse right across from Coor’s field, in lower downtown (LODO) Denver.   It is a fresh start for me as I have a new work environment, a new project in eBay Desktop, and a new work neighborhood.   Since the warehouse is under construction right now we are all in the same room working with architect like hover lamps.   I will try to post a picture soon.   So far the lighting has really helped me concentrate on my work.   Also being in the same room as everyone else means I never feel like I am missing out on anything so oddly I am able to concentrate better so far.   EffectiveUI has provided us all with noise cancelling headphones but everybody works quietly most of the time anyway as we all get into development or design mode.

At this time I am also re-dedicating myself to some self-management techniques which I won’t drone on about but I will highlight a few.  I am big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and along those lines I am using 2 really good tools, Journier and iGTD.  iGTD is an amazing implementation of GTD for the Mac that I have used ever since it came out.  It has so many features and integrations that it will fit well with whatever Mac mail, journal or other tools you use.  Journier is my journaling tool and it allows for rapid entry of journal entries, tagging, smart folders, blogging, audio, video and other features.  I use it to keep notes on every phonecall, meeting, everything I do during the day, mind sweeps, and everything else that doesn’t go into iGTD or this blog.  The tagging and smart folders provide a very flexible form of organization to help you easily keep track of your notes and thoughts.

Back to work on eBay.

Denver RIA Summit

My company, effectiveUI, is hosting a RIA Summit. Dang, that’s big stuff. This one is going to have some great business strategic thinkers like Ryan Stewart. He blogs about the summit in a recent post. Most of the summits for RIA focus on developer issues since Flex and Apollo are still emerging technologies. But this one will focus on more business issues. I am proud that we are involved with this one and look forward to meeting more of you here.

To sign up go here.