brunobergher::blog

This may be really old, but it’s that kind of tip that’s always useful, even is somewhat late.

For about a year now I’ve been using the great gotAPI, e simple website that compiles reference and documentation for a bunch of programming languages. It’s basically a group of XML indexes of documentation website, showing content in an iframe, providing direct links to the official websites were the docs are. Very simple, very effective.

And the site even remembers the tabs (languages) you kept open from the last time you visited.

Learning Flex through this tool has been infinitely easier and faster then if I had to depend on Adobe’s search.

I bumped into this problem a few weeks ago and couldn’t figure out how to solve: we have this application with multiple popups, most with a black overlay behind them. But one specifically needed a white overlay.

The settings for this overlay are usually inserted into the main MXML <mx:Application /> tag or with the global style selector, as in:

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">
	modalTransparency=".5"
	modalTransparencyBlur="0"
	modalTransparencyColor="#000000">
</mx:application>

or

<mx:Style>
	global {
		modalTransparencyBlur: 0;
		modalTransparency: .5;
		modalTransparencyColor: #000000;
	}
</mx:Style>

But those setting are kept for the entire application and there is no apparent way to change those at runtime.

Gladly I chose to ask at the great blog.flexexamples.com if anyone could help me, and the great peterd posted a whole set of explanations on how to do it. Thanks a lot peterd!

Basically you can access the global style settings and runtime through StyleManager.getStyleDeclaration("global") and then use setStyle() to change them.

You better check out the entire explanation over there.

I wonder why Adobe (and the numerous evangelists doing a great job promoting and explaining Flex) insists on marketing Flex and Flash as opposed, or at least very, very different things?

Flex is a framework. A bunch of very useful code that streamlines and support the [earlier] exasperating process of writing applications in ActionScript. But it’s written AS3, produces SWFs, runs in the Adobe Flash Player. When you’re writing a Flex preloader you even find out that the whole of Flex code is put in the Frame 2 of a Flash timeline, with the preloader in frame 1. There’s nothing you can do with Flex that you couldn’t eventually do with straight AS3, even in the Flash IDE timeline.

I do see that people from a AS1/2 background might have some initial difficulty understanding the difference (I know I did), but why try to make it so different? OK, Flex is totally targeted toward applications, but many sites nowadays can’t be discerned in many ways from very visual applications.

No one will try to prove or at least say that CakePHP is different from PHP. and most certainly there will be no one trying to show how Rails is opposed in anyway to Ruby. It’s like comparing apples and apple juice!

Ted Patrick is writing on this, and that’s what got me thinking.

Just wanted to say it. I told I’d blog anything from now on.