BetaDesigns( Blog ).toString( );

In the previous post we began building our custom Spark colorPicker by creating the preview class and it's corresponding default skin.
In this post we will begin by creating a KeyboardManager class that will allow us to calculate the new index in the dataProvider after a Up/Down/Left/Right keyboard input.

This class can become quite complicated because we want the following behaviour from our keyboard manager.
The selected index should be able to move up past the top of the dataProvider and move to the bottom row and vice versa, in addition we should be able to go off the left hand side of the columns and appear on the right hand side and vice versa.

For example if the dataProvider has 25 items and each row contains 5 columns.

Up / Down Examples.
If we are at column 1 row 1 ( box 1 ) and we press up we should go to column 1 row 5( box 2 ) and then for every key press we should move up the column until we hit the row 1 column 1 index again. However if we press down then we should go to column 1 row 2 and so forth until we hit column 1 row 5 ( box 2 ). Then when we press down again we should move to the top of the column again row 1 column 1 ( box 1 ) and this should be the case for each column no matter how many rows it has.

Box 1          Box 2

(more...)

In this brief set of posts I wanted to document how to convert a simple MX component over to a Spark component. I have chosen to convert the MX ColorPicker because it is one of the components that Adobe hasn't moved over to the Spark framework yet as well as being the component that I used to learn the Flex3 Framework. You can see the outcome and view the source of that in my previous posts from a couple of years ago here and here

Below you can see the three components.

Full source

I just discovered this little trick, I'm not sure how useful it is but it works.

Simply create a class that throws an error in the constructor. This will cause the browser to crash and close.

 
 
package
{
   public class BrowserCrasher
   {
      public function BrowserCrasher( )
      {
         throw new Error( 'goodbye browser' );
      }
   }
}
 

I just came across the idea of static initializers in Java and was wondering if they are available in ActionScript as well.

I found a couple posts on the subject.

post 1

post 2

I recently stumbled across this awesome project by somerandomdude and just wanted to give it some exposure as it is open source and even in 3D

I was strolling through the UIComponent source code earlier today when i cam across this line of code.

 
 //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    //
    //  Class mixins
    //
    //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
    /**
     *  @private
     *  Placeholder for mixin by UIComponentAccImpl.
     */
mx_internal static var createAccessibilityImplementation:Function;
 

I wasn't entirely sure what a mixin was but after reading up on wikipedia I realized they are exactly what they sound like basically just a mix of code bases. There is a really good post over on the yahoo flash blog about accessibility and the way in which Flex uses the

 
[AccessibilityClass(implementation="mx.accessibility.UIComponentAccImpl")]
 

meta data to mixin the Accessibility code into the UIComponent implementation.

I was trying to load a byteArray into an image control today and would randomly get an Unhandled IOErrorEvent message. Now this shouldn't really happen as the image control uses a default broken image icon to display when there are any loading problems. Well after trying to catch the error unsuccessfully I wanted to know what was going on.
So i went digging and i found in the base class of image, SWFLoader line 1497 the following (more...)

Ok I needed to disable Heading elements inside a List Component in Flex, and i was being too lazy to work it out for myself so i picked up the Flex cookbook Adobe had been kind enough to send me and yes... It was there. Now the Mouse removal was straight forward and worked like a charm. But the keyboard events were a different story. The code didn't work for several reasons.
1. Key directions were not being assigned.
2. When a disabled item was at either the top or the bottom of the list it would stop you being able to continue down / up the list.
To fix this i added the following code. (more...)