Getting snippets to work with FlashBuilder Beta
Just a quick note here. I use the excellent snippet plugin from Lee Brimlow over at the theFlashBlog so that i don't have to put up with all the cfeclipse icons across the top of my toolbar. But I recently installed a beta version of FlashBuilder and found that when i installed the plugin it would no longer work. After much searching i found the solution for me was to go into the plugin folder and open the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file and remove the following two lines from the bottom of the file.
org.eclipse.jface.text;bundle-version="3.4.1",
com.adobe.flexbuilder.editors.common;bundle-version="3.0.214193"
This re-enabled the plugin for me. Great!
Another little tip with working with snippets and workspaces:
when switching workspaces you lose all your snippets as they are kept in the workspaces .metadata/.plugins/org.cfeclipse.cfml/snippets
this folder is recreated for each new workspace you create. So what i do is keep a global snippets folder in my main workspace and simply replace the snippets folder in my other workspaces with a simlink to the main one. That way when ever i add a new snippet it is shared across all my workspaces.
just a little side note:: if you don't know how to show hidden files in mac osx. type the following into the terminal and then restart finder.
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFIles TRUE
To turn it off set it to false. You also need to restart Finder for it to take effect.
Also if you don't know how to create the simlink you simple go into the terminal, navigate to your workspace then .metadata>.plugins>org.cfeclipse.cfml delete the snippets folder that is in there and then type
ln -s PATH TO YOUR WORKSPACE WHERE YOU KEEP YOUR MAIN SNIPPET FOLDER/snippets Snippets
This should then put a simlink inside your workspace and you can then share your snippets across all your workspaces instead of having to copy them into each.
IMXMLObject for non visual components
I have been using Flex for a couple of years now and i still find new and interesting framework items. In comes IMXMLObject. Up until recently whenever i wanted to place a non visual component into mxml i was extending UIComponent to allow me to place these items in MXML, however among other things this meant that they would be included in the layout and come with a high footprint.
The solution seems to be to implement the IMXMLObject interface this will allow you to place non visual components into your mxml code without having to worry about layout or an unnecessary memory footprint.
usefull links
livedocs
smashedapples
techper



