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OpenAMF is one ornery )($*%. I don't mind
things being strict, but without helpful error messages, it's hard to get
right. I agree with Darron, though, once you get OpenAMF working, it's
pretty good in terms of performance. Getting ValueObjects to match was
always a battle with me & the Java developer getting it exactly right with
OpenAMF.
Isn't the demo a 60 day trial? If so, you'll
be near the end of February. A new build of Flex 2 should definately be
out by then. I believe Flex server will revert to only allowing 1 IP
then, but will still work. What won't is FlexBulider, but you don't
necessarely need FlexBuilder; a lot of people on this list use Eclipse, Oxygen,
BBEdit, Vim, and Emacs. I believe you can actually call & negotiate
with Macrome... er, Adobe sales and get your FlexBuilder license
extended.
You can also apply for a Non-commercial Flex
license if you are a blogger or like to show off technology.
Still, I think Flex 2 will hopefully have a new
build out by then, and going from Flex 1.5 > Flex 2 is a lot easier than the
other way around with more benefit.
Not sure about production costs, others on the list
should be able to help with that one.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Having hard time understanding what
features are available to whom when and how
That's very informative. I'll be trying it soon.
I
did install Tomcat and Flex 1.5 in the way that you suggested and confirmed that
it was running properly with the samples. I've also looked through some of
the 1.5 examples and found it encouraging. I have part of my app that I
initially built in 2.0 under Eclipse which I need to move back into the 1.5
environment.
I'm finding the OpenAMF stuff a bit confusing. I've
been studying http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/archives/000186.cfm
and hope that it is relevant. I'm wondering if I have to read up on Flash,
but perhaps not.
So what I'm going to attempt next is to Flex to download
the initial colors from the server using OpenAMF, add some rudimentary controls
to the Flex page to change the colors and another button to write them back to
the server. If I can get that to work today, I will think that Flex 1.5
will most likely get me through this demo.
I'm still wondering whether I
will run up against trial deadline limits on the demo products I am using that
will get. I also have to figure out what to tell the potential investors
about how much the use of Flex will add to the cost of the production product.
Thanks for your help,
Bruce
On 12/28/05, JesterXL
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Dude, that is so easy. You
just:
- import each graphic into Flash
- give it an instance name
- modify the code I posted to do:
var c:Color = new
Color(targetState);
c.setRGB(0xFF0000);
That'll set it red, and ONLY it. If you
have the graphic as a PNG or GIF (transparency intact), it'll color just the
shape with nice edges.
You could do the same in Flex as well, just embed
the images:
[Embed(source="maine.png")]
var main_png:String;
<mx:Image id="main_png_img"
source="{main_png}" />
And set the color the same way:
var c:Color = new
Color(main_png_img);
c.setRGB(0xFF0000);
Flash, Flex... either one. Additionally,
Bline Express created a pretty phat USA Map component with all 50
states. Methods already exist in it to set colors, know which state you
clicked on, etc. It's written for Flash 6, but you could easily load
that into a Flex Loader, and use proxy functions to call the Flash 6 methods
in the externally loaded SWF.
Bring it.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Having hard time understanding what
features are available to whom when and how
Thanks for the prompt reply.
I can see how your
suggestion would work, but in my case I don't think I can use the background
color. Imagine if the shapes were the six states of New England on a
map. I want to be able to control the color of each state to be one of
eight colors.
I can see a few approaches. One would be to treat
the whole map of New England as a graphic and then somehow repaint the
individual state, perhaps on a pixel by pixel basis. I suppose that
could work, but it would be tedious.
Another way would be to have a
graphic object of each state with a transparent background and then overlay
them appropriately in their appropriate positions. However, the color I
would have to then change would be the foreground object color and I don't
know that there is a simple way to do that. I could, perhaps, supply
eight graphics for each state and then switch between them using _javascript_ to
alter the DHTML. That might be feasible for six states, but if the map
included all fifty states, I would need at least 50 * 8 graphic objects to use
that approach.
A third way might be to somehow use areamaps and
regions, but I don't know if that would result in DHTML where I could easily
recolor a region.
What do you think would work?
Bruce
On 12/28/05, JesterXL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Can help with #3.
Here's a sample:
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application
xmlns:mx="http://www.macromedia.com/2003/mxml
"
initialize="initApp()">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import
mx.controls.ComboBox;
private function
initApp():Void
{
var color_str:String =
color_cb.selectedItem.toString();
colorMe_box.setStyle("backgroundColor",
color_str);
}
private function
setColor(event:Object):Void
{
var cb:ComboBox =
ComboBox(event.target);
var color_str:String =
cb.selectedItem.toString();
colorMe_box.setStyle("backgroundColor",
color_str);
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:FormItem
label="Colors:">
<mx:ComboBox
id="color_cb"
change="setColor(event)">
<mx:dataProvider>
<mx:Array>
<mx:String>0x000000</mx:String>
<mx:String>0x660000</mx:String>
<mx:String>0x000066</mx:String>
</mx:Array>
</mx:dataProvider>
</mx:ComboBox>
</mx:FormItem>
<mx:Box
id="colorMe_box"
borderStyle="solid"
width="100"
height="100"/>
</mx:Application>
-----
Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Having hard time understanding what
features are available to whom when and how
I've used Axis on other projects, but I'm not sure how this
interaction as a RemoteObject would look in the context of Flex 2.0 .
Do you know of a working example of this somewhere? I'm not sure what
I would code on the Flex side and I'm not sure what I'd need to do on the
server side to make it compatible and synchronize.
I'm also
wondering whether everything is available to support developing this demo
for as long as it takes or if I will at some point have to buy a license for
one thing or another to continue development. I also need to know how
to explain the production operational costs to a potential investor.
Potentially this is an application run by large companies on their own
servers for many subscribers.
And from a technical viewpoint, I'm
still wondering how to implement these arbitrary small shapes (such as
states on a map) that need to change to one of a number of colors. I'd
probably be able to answer that by myself if I were a Flash developer, but
my Flash experience is limited to having run through the examples of a much
earlier version of Flash.
I know that's a lot of
questions.
Thanks,
Bruce
On 12/27/05, Matt
Chotin <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >
wrote:
I
think you'll find 1.5 a more stable development experience in the
next
month though of course 2.0 offers a lot of stuff. For
RemoteObject in
2.0 for now you do need the 2.0 CF adapter, but as many
folks will be
happy to point out you could also just expose your Java
objects via a
WebService using Apache Axis instead (this should be done
in the 2.0
samples maybe but is definitely in 1.5 for reference).
The Flex 2 alpha
will hint at functionality (like RemoteObject) that
may not actually be
functional in your
configuration.
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:
[email protected]] On
Behalf Of JesterXL
Sent: Tuesday,
December 27, 2005 4:39 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [flexcoders]
Having hard time understanding what features
are available to whom when
and how
I cannot answer all of your questions, but here are my
suggestions.
- assuming on Windows, download Apache Tomcat
-
download Flex 1.5 demo
- install Flex 1.5 demo with just FlexBuilder
1.5
- copy and paste the flex.war & samples.war files into Tomcat's
webapps
directory
Hit the samples page to ensure all is
well. On mine, it's:
http://localhost:8080/samples/
I've yet to get
Flex 2 to work with Remoting + AMFPHP. Considering AMF
(the
binary format used to send serialized class bits across the wire) is
undergoing big changes, OpenAMF (Java) and AMFPHP (PHP) don't
really
work
yet.
I've heard of some people getting Remoting
to work with the CFAdapter,
but I
don't use CF ( I do at work, but
I don't code it). Some have reported
success with the
WebService/HTTPService.
Me? I use Flex 1.5 every day and it
works great. At night, I moonlight
in
Flex 2, but she's still
alpha, so we have a ways to go.
The bad news is, for those client
developers (like me) who only care
about
the client, Flex 1.5 has
the server requirement. However, you can still
snag SWF's off
of the server once compiled as well as to show clients of
what's
possible. Good news, she works great, HTTPService
(GET/POST)
works,
WebService works, and RemoteObject works with
AMFPHP, OpenAMF, and
ColdFusion.
Hope that helps some.
Feel free to post more questions.
----- Original Message -----
From: "BCichowlas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: <
[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005
4:22 PM
Subject: [flexcoders] Having hard time understanding what
features are
available to whom when and how
Hi!
I'm
an independent developer trying to put together an RIA demo
for
potential investors in a proposed enterprise. This
proposed
enterprise is not a software company but would make heavy use
of an
RIA application.
My most reasonable choices seem to be
Flex, Laszlo or Ajax (in its
many variations). I spent the last
week with the Iteration Two Flex
book, downloading what is available
freely to developers from the
Macromedia/Adobe site.
As part of
my demo, I need to be able to change the color of irregular
small
shapes. The shapes themselves are known in advance and
don't
change. For the sake of discussion, it is as if I had an
outline of
New England, divided into the six New England states and I
wanted to
be able to choose one of eight colors for each of the states
based on
user interaction.
After looking at the complexities of
Ajax, Flex seemed like an ideal
choice. Since I develop under
Eclipse and since the 2.0 alpha seemed
like a generally usable version,
it was my first choice. However, the
examples in the Iteration
Two book seem to be written for 1.0 or 1.5,
and I spent quite a while
trying to run them under 2.0 with varying
degrees of success.
My
database needs for this demo application are modest, but I did want
to
be able to use RemoteObject. I was never able to get
anything
using RemoteObject to operate successfully. I was
developing under
Eclipse and using the "Run Flex application" to try to
run my
application. I'm not sure exactly what runtime environment
this
results in, but I had been successful at getting some small
forms
running successfully and trading string messages with the
server.
Is RemoteObject supposed to be possible using only the 2.0
alpha
materials? If not, what do I need? The Cold Fusion
server
extensions? The Enterprise version? Is what I need
available now?
Does it cost money just to use for a demo? Are
there some examples of
using a RemoteObject under 2.0 that I could try
under Eclipse? Should
I be using 1.5 instead?
I am
wondering if my expectations of the 2.0 alpha are inappropriate
for
programming a demo now and in January 2006. I'm not a Cold
Fusion
user and have only a rudimentary understanding of its
operation. I'm
now thinking that I should use Ajax or possibly
Laszlo, but would
listen carefully to any argument that Flex is the
right
choice.
Thanks,
Bruce
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Bruce
Cichowlas
Affirm Tech
Software Development and Consulting
http://www.affirmtech.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(508)-904-6122
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Bruce
Cichowlas
Affirm Tech
Software Development and Consulting
http://www.affirmtech.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(508)-904-6122
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Bruce
Cichowlas
Affirm Tech
Software Development and Consulting
http://www.affirmtech.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(508)-904-6122
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