If you have played around with the new Flex 4 states then you know just how easy it is to change the visual appearance of a component. But the <states> syntax also works on events. So now we can do something like this:
<s:states> <s:State name="disarry" /> <s:State name="confusion" /> <s:State name="mind" /> </s:states> <s:Button click.disarry="onClick_disarry()" click.confusion="onClick( 'confusion' )" click.mind="onClick( 'whatever' )"/>
Of course you could just call to the same event handler and run a switch on the currentState. That would do the same but this approach seems a little cleaner.
You can also change things like the skinClass of a component on a state change. Actually, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t apply to the new states syntax. It’s just going to take some time getting used to and thinking about how this will affect our code organization. I’m pretty sure this will help keep simplify things and make for cleaner and more easily maintained code.
And yes, I could totally see myself making <states> that have the names above. I give things weird names. I’m pretty sure that when a developer goes to hell their punishment is to maintain my code. :)
You can also use states in one document to easily change the currentState in another document, for example in this sample application:
<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
xmlns:local="*">
<fx:Declarations>
<fx:Component className="CustomComponent">
<s:Group>
<s:states>
<s:State name="stateA" />
<s:State name="stateB" />
</s:states>
<s:Label text="{currentState}" />
</s:Group>
</fx:Component>
</fx:Declarations>
<s:states>
<s:State name="state1" />
<s:State name="state2" />
</s:states>
<s:controlBarContent>
<s:Button label="change application state" click="currentState=currentState=='state1'?'state2':'state1'" />
</s:controlBarContent>
<local:CustomComponent currentState.state1="stateA" currentState.state2="stateB" />
</s:Application>
(Assuming that code comes through, ok)
This can come in handy and wasn't very obvious to me at first so thought I would pass it along.
@Steven: That is pretty slick. Thanks for sharing. I’ll keep this in mind.