Tag: flex

Presenting at the Esri Developer Summit

I’ll be presenting at the Esri Developer Summit this week (March 7 – 9, 2011) . So, if you are at the conference in Palm Springs, California stop by and say “hi”. If you aren’t familiar with this conference, it is the largest geo-developer conference in North America with over 1200 geo-geeks basking in all manner of technical geographic goodness. There will be 63 technical sessions and around 29 sessions presented by non-Esri, ArcGIS developers. What better way to learn than to hear it straight from the developers on the front lines…right??!

I have three sessions: a pre-conference session on Getting Started with the ArcGIS API for Android (beta), Localizing the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex, and integrated Volunteered Geographic Information and Social Media into your GIS. A GIS, is a Geographic Information System, for all you non-geo-geeks. Hope to see you there!

Creating a Copy of a Default Spark Skin Class

Here’s five easy steps for creating a copy of a default Adobe Spark skin class in Flash Builder 4. There may be documentation on how to do this on the Adobe site, but I can never find it when the need arises. So, here goes:

Step 1:  In Flash Builder, make sure you are in the Flash perspective (upper right hand corner), and right click on any folder in your project. Choose New > MXML Skins

Step 2.  In the New MXML Skin window, fill in the package and name fields.

Step 3. Select “Browse” to choose your Host Component. Start typing the name of the component and choose the one that you need. Click Ok.

Step 4.  Check “Create as copy of”, and then use the drop down list to choose the skin you want. Click Finish.

 Step 5. Make sure you see the Adobe copyright in the skin’s MXML file. And that’s it, you are good to go!

Debugging with Flash Builder 4 – Flash Player Debugger Req’d

If you are just starting out with Adobe’s Flash Builder 4, or you installed it on a new machine, you’ll need to install the debug version of Flash Player for everything to work correctly. If you have the regular, non-debug version of the Player installed, the debugger in Flash Builder won’t be able to connect to Flash Player, it will either throw a warning or it will hang and then eventually time-out.

To find out what version of Flash Player you have installed, go here to Adobe’s Flash Player Version Checker. If your results look like this screenshot, you’ll need to upgrade.

To get the latest version of the Flash Player debugger version go here. Be sure to scroll down the page and look for the section that’s appropriate for your operating system. If you are using Firefox on Windows for example, then choose the Netscape-compatible option: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

If you are looking to uninstall Flash Player for troubleshooting, then you’ll want to read this Adobe Knowledge Base article.