Apollo Tip: Never See the Flex Loader
By Roger Braunstein | on March 22, 2007
In AIR, Flex, Programming | 2 Comments
Here’s a really simple trick you can use to prevent the Flex loader from showing when you start up your application. All you have to do is hide the window, and show it when the Application is ready.
In MyApplication-app.xml:
<rootContent systemChrome="standard" transparent="false" visible="false">[SWF reference is generated]</rootContent>
This sets your application manifest to make the root window invisible. Then, you just make it visible when everything’s ready:
In MyApplication.mxml:
<mx:MyApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" creationComplete="window.visible = true"> …
Easy peasy!
Using E4X With XHTML? Watch Your Namespaces!
By Roger Braunstein | on March 22, 2007
In AS3, Programming | 13 Comments
One of the best things about AS3 so far, for me, is the decision to make it much noisier about failing. If there was one thing that was frustrating before, it was trying to track down what failed silently and where, only seeing the effects far downstream, with a barely workable debugger. Things are sooo much better now.
Nonetheless! There are always going to be little things that trip up every new programmer until you learn them, or maybe that trip you up over and over because it’s just so hard to remember. Certainly there will be less of these in AS3, but new is exciting, right? Ok, so enough intro. I post stupid mistakes. You learn from my mistakes. Somewhere, an old woman makes waffles. Read on.
Continue reading Using E4X With XHTML? Watch Your Namespaces!…
Tech Writing Tips
By Mims Wright | on March 21, 2007
In Authors, Business, Hacks, Life, Serious Stuff, Tutorial | No Comments
As you may know, Roger and I are working on the next version of the ActionScript Bible published by Wiley (the Amazon page is full of errors, don’t worry, it’s not even out yet). I wanted to share a few tips that I use as notes to myself for when I’m stuck with writing.
- Write headlines and use the outline view to order the big picture
- Simplify
- Base information around a task that the reader might want to do
- Write or flow without being concerned about the form then go back and edit it later
- Ask “Do I really need this?”
- Read other similar books
- Say it out loud then write down what you say
- Work on something that you know you can finish then go back to where you were stuck
- Forget about style and focus on the facts
- Take breaks and do something different like drawing a diagram or writing a code sample