ranting and raving about (the sad state of) information technology
I added the new WordPress plugin to track stats on one of my sites and I wasn’t getting any stats. Turns out the theme I’m using is using a different (likely older) footer code than the stats are expecting.
I added a line into the stats code to make it catch the hook:
// Plant the tracking code in the footer
add_action( 'wp_footer', 'stats_footer', 101 );
add_action( ‘get_footer’, ’stats_footer’, 101 );
Banging my head on some PrintDataGrid oddities, reported as Bug 15305. I suspect some of the code is making the assumption that only one PrintDataGrid will ever exists.
The sizing of the data grids seems oddly tied to previous grids that have been created. Can’t figure out exactly the cause, but the code to recreate is on the bug report. Here’s the execution:
Hit reload each time you want to reset the application.
Create grids, increase the number of rows, create again.
Or, 4 grids, 4 rows, the last grid loses a row.
You should always be the squeeky wheel!
I emailed a contact I had in the Adobe documents group (thanks, Matt!) and found out that Adobe was aware of their Dead Docs problem.
But more importantly they provided a link to a downloadable API documents for the Flex/ActionScript 3.0 collection - I’d much rather have it locally than over the web, and I was previously unable to find a download of such a thing.
Open Question: How many PDP-11 emulators could you concurrently run on a 8-core MacPro?
If you use Flex on a Mac you may have noticed that the trackpad scroll doesn’t work. The Flex team has deferred the problem, claiming it’s a Flash Player bug. I can’t find the Flash Player bug database, so I can’t confirm it.
If you use Flex and find this as huge an issue as I do, please vote for it in their bug database.
My responses to Flex and Java – A Perfect Technological Marriage, section by section
Intro: “so you’ve been a java developer…” then “… JavaScript”. Java and JavaScript, two different things. (Acknowledged implicitly in section 1)
Flex will be familiar to a Java developer. It will be familiar to a JavaScript web developer. And understanding the language and understanding the libraries are two different things. It’s like knowing the Java syntax and not the collection classes, or any other of the 100s of bundled classes there are. Flex libraries will not be familiar.
The Flex development process: It’s a lot like the one you use for Java. Um, yeah. This is the case for all technological solutions. I’ve gone through object-oriented analysis and design for projects implemented in a forward-chaining expert system language and C-based X-Window interfaces. Development is development. The language we speak our solution in is just that.
And you compile both, and unit test both … that’s like saying you use the keyboard to type both. It’s not something unique to the relationship between Java and Flex.
Flex is simple to use and helps you develop code faster. To state that all the user interface elements implement all the possible functionalities you might need is a bit presumptive. Complex data in ColumnGrids? And to overstate the user interface is anything different than other frameworks to provide is to stretch the truth.
I also still haven’t drunk the XML is coding and not a file format cool-ade. MXML is just more of the same, and the frequent need to embed ActionScript into MXML speaks to its limitations.
I would modify the statement that FlexBuilder is easy to use (though it could be much better). Flex without the builder would be unbearable.
Some differences between Flex and Java. You are using two different technologies at a well defined layer in your application architecture. This forces you to follow design and development you should have done anyway. This should not be the major difference you notice.
They are two different technologies. Connecting between them requires either text or xml, which was first used only because web developers are used to that sort of thing. The newer serializations require a translation technology between the server and client side. Using two different solution technologies also requires the duplication of effort, or code generation based on other code, neither a desirable solution.
I think Java and Flex is as good a pair (right now) as any. But I think some are perhaps naive to paint it so rosily. If you are a JavaEE developer, learning Flex will definitely have a learning curve (like learning anything). The more exposure to XML or JavaScript you’ve had, the better. The more user interface experience, the better.
Overall, I suspect Dimitrios has lived his whole coding live developing web-based applications. Now that he is being introduced to proper client-server applications, he sees the benefit. And I wholly agree with him on that!
Today on JavaRanch I saw the following:
Yes, those are Hebrew comments in Java code.
Why is the XML namespace for Adobe’s Flex mx?
When I first started back into tech in October, I was ignorant of the names of most of the technologies and how they fit in the ecosystem. I hadn’t heard of Flex, Flash’s big brother.
Since I’ve become familiar with it, and have been working with the Flex Builder 3 beta 3 I’ve been wondering if I’d see it around more.
I saw a stats graph on boardgamegeek.com that I suspected may have been Flex, but I’m not that familiar with the graphing subsystem.
But when I saw the store locator embed on the ChicoBag site, it was obviously implemented in Flex. Glad to see it.
If you have ever had to review someone else’s MXML code and tried to trace your way through hierarchies of VBox controls containing HBox controls containing VBox controls containing TileList controls containing VBox controls, and so forth, you will quickly realize the value in creating components that have semantic meaning. -Steven Webster, Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm Microarchitecture – Part 3: Architecting the View
What I quickly realized was that although MXML may be a fabulous declarative file format, it makes a crappy language.
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