Rob Rusher

For over a decade now, we have been trained to use the "back" and "forward" buttons in our Web browser to review or backtrack previously viewed content. We are trained to the point that there are even keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, this can be a problem when browsing Flex applications. Being the well-trained users that we are, we often forget that we could cause the Flex application to reload unwittingly. Fortunately, there is a solution that is built into the Flex SDK and HTML templates that are generated in a Flex Builder project. By default, Flex enables history management for only a couple of navigator containers, without using any additional ActionScript or MXML tags. Although this is a good start, we often need more options to build truly custom applications. In order to implement your own custom history management, you will need to use the HistoryManager ... (more)

Adobe Flash and Flex Accessibility with Screen Readers

First, yes, screen readers can read Flex applications. And yes, its fairly easy. But, I’ll discuss how in a future post. But, if you’d rather send people to your old HTML version of your site when using a read, there is good news. Flash Player has the ability to detect if a screen reader is running on the client machine, even if JavaScript is disabled and/or the Flex application is not compiled as an “accessible swf”. This is possible with the Accessibility class. It is important to note that if the Flex application is compiled as an “accessible swf”, the screen reader will also ... (more)

Adobe Flex/AS3 Code Quality Tool (PMD)

Adobe recently released (August 2009) the Flex implementation of PMD tool which is extensively used at J2EE shops for code quality management. FlexPMD is a tool that helps to improve code quality by auditing any AS3/Flex source directory and detecting common bad practices. The Flex PMD tool is locate on the Adobe Open Source Projects site. http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexpmd/FlexPMD It is available as an ANT task, command line and Mac OSX Automator. And before you ask, no, there isn’t an Eclipse plugin… yet. ... (more)

Free Flash Builder 4 Licenses

Adobe gives away free copies of the new Flash Builder 4 Standard edition to students, teachers, and unemployed developers. To apply for your free copy, visit http://bit.ly/FreeFlashBuilder ... (more)

Dynamically resize nested Flex List with variableRowHeight

Another quick post… I was stuck recently with a Flex component that had a List with an itemRenderer. The itemRenderer contained another List with an itemRenderer. Now the problem with this is that the data had unique counts and the lists had variable row heights (variableRowHeight = true). The result was that containers would not dynamically resize enough to display the whole List. In other words, the List was clipped and vertical scroll bars were displayed. After trying several ways to get it to resize correctly and failing miserably, I extended the List component. As I was doin... (more)