This is easily accomplished but requires a bit of a hack.

Firstly, you need to listen for the MOVE event on the nativeWindow.

nativeWindow.addEventListener( NativeWindowBoundsEvent.MOVE, onAppMoved );

Then when it moves you store the nativeWindow.x/y coordinates in a local database. Super easy, right? Oh, wait a second. The nativeWindow.x/y coordinates might report back incorrectly. You see, when the app starts up it’s going to reposition itself which means the nativeWindow will move twice. Once for the x-update and once for the y-update. Trouble is that when the onAppMoved event handler fires the nativeWindow.x/y won’t be accurate. You need to wait.

The hack I used was to set up a Timer and reset(); start(); every time the onAppMoved event is fired. The Timer waits 250 milliseconds – plenty of time to get it right – and then stores the coordinates. When the Timer handler finally does fire then I stop the Timer.

The added bonus is that when the user is dragging the app around you won’t be updating your local database 100+ times as the onAppMove handler is firing over and over while the app moves. Now it will only fire after a 250 millisecond delay is reached between move events. Which is likely to be when the user stops dragging the app around.

Fortunately I haven’t noticed this issue with the app reporting it’s width/height as the app is resized.

Reposition an AIR app to last position ( Everyone remember where we parked ) originally appeared on polyGeek.com on May 11, 2012.

Random Walk in 3D

I don’t know what it is but I just love the patterns, or lack of patterns, in a random walk. Especially when it’s done in 3D. It sort of reminds me of a complex protein molecule folding up on itself. At any rate it’s fun and easy to play around with and so I thought I’d update my old random walk done in Away3D 3.6 with a new one done with Away3D 4.0 beta.

The only real difference with this one is that I added a nifty little option to fade the color of the line segments from blue to red along the path.

Note: The text input on the NumericStepper doesn’t work in fullscreen. I’m really looking forward to Using Fullscreen Interactive and Mouse Lock in Flash Player 11.3.

Random Walk in Away3D 4.0 originally appeared on polyGeek.com on May 3, 2012.

r = 2.0 + ( 1.6 * Math.cos( i * 4 ) );

I don’t know about you but I love the new Apache Flex logo. And when I saw it I couldn’t help but see that the shape was similar to a mathematical Rose. So of course I spent way, WAY, too much time futzing around with values until I could create a rough representation using Away3D 4.0.

If your curious the Apache Flex logo = 2.0 + 1.6 * Math.cos( i * 4 );

Creating the shape of the logo was pretty easy. But getting the colors to change the way they do took a chunk of work. I went through a handful of different approaches until I finally settled on what you see. It isn’t exact but you get the idea, right?

This was also my first expedition into the land of Away3D 4.0 beta. Quite a bit different than 3.6. I’m looking forward to spending some good quality time with 4.0 and redoing a lot of my previous work done in 3.6 including my entire Away3D 101 series. Converting everything over will be a good exercise in understanding the changes between the two versions of Away3D.

Here’s the official Apache Flex logo so you can compare and see how close I got.

The new, and much improved, Apache Flex logo.

I’m continually amazed that such beautiful objects can be created through such simple code. The shape is created with one very simple line of code:

_r = 2.0 + 1.6 * Math.cos( i * 4 );

While that creates the shape it takes another line of code to create the spiral effect is the line wraps around and around:

_r += _r + 0.6 * Math.cos( _r ) + ( i / twoPi ) / 20;

That one took a bit of futzing with to get the spiral to be the way you see.

By turning the constants into variables that can be changed via a slider you can play around and get lots of variations on the shape of the rose. Have fun.

FYI, when you’re playing around with Away3D and you can’t get it to work in your browser then remember to set wmode=direct. That’s probably the thing you forgot. I know I did. :-)

Mathematical representation of the Apache Flex Logo in Away3D originally appeared on polyGeek.com on May 1, 2012.

Think again. If you read the details – here’s the FAQ -  it will affect a vanishingly small percentage of developers. Actually, you should count your blessings if it affects you as a developer because it means that your game/app is a monetary success!

Here are the details, and I’ll use small words so that tech reporters are sure to understand ( Yeah, I’m talking to you Stephen Shankland of CNET. )

First, there is a totally new feature added to the Flash Player 11.2 and AIR: Domain Memory. Domain Memory makes it possible to run existing C/C++ code bases within Flash Player.  Do you need to have a license to use that? No. It’s free for everyone to jump in and use without restriction and without a license.

Second, Stage3D – that’s hardware accelerated graphics – came out for the Flash Player last year and now it’s available for AIR. You can use Stage3D in your apps/games without restriction and without a license.

If you use both Domain Memory and Stage3D together then you need to have a license. But you still don’t pay a dime for it. You only pay if your app/game makes over $50,000. So basically that’s big companies that have dozens of developers working on a single project and spend millions in development anyway.

Oh, but wait, there’s more – or less in this case. This doesn’t apply to apps/games deployed to mobile markets. Got it? You can use both Domain Memory and Stage3D together in a mobile app/game without license or restriction and make a million dollars and keep every penny – except the 30% that Apple/Google take.

So do you really think this will impact you? Please, in your dreams. But I hope it does and for me as well. I would love to have a game that makes $50,000+, wouldn’t you? Except that I have no intention of making a desktop game and besides that I don’t have a million lines of C/C++ code laying around that I need to use Domain Memory.

You might be thinking, “Sure, I won’t use these particular features but what if Adobe starts charging for other things that I do want to use?” In this case you’re right. Adobe does plan on adding more Premium Features. And that’s fine. The features they are targeting are things that would be insanely useful to large scale apps/games. Stuff that if you had to create it on your own might take months, or years, of development. If Adobe drops code in that solves your problem then why not try to make a dime off of the people who make lots of money from it? Adobe isn’t a charity just handing out code like it was free to create.

<soapBox>

Please give me a moment to vent here. Tech reporters in general are idiotic, deceiving, pond scum. Anyone with a brain could read the Adobe press release and see that this isn’t big news to hardly anyone. But do they write it like that? No. They write things to be inflammatory. They want comments and they want people to share their article. People don’t share news that is accurately reported to not be big news. They share things that inflame their already preconceived prejudices.

This is bad enough in the tech world. But in the real news it is quite harmful. News is twisted and miss-represented to such a degree that it’s hard to know what’s really going on today. It’s like the headlines of “Obama is makes free speech a federal offense.” Does that sound like something you should read? Yes. Is it accurate? No. The people who are spewing that crap would be silent as mice if it were a Republican president in the oval office right now. And here’s some news for you: YOUR Republican Congress passed the damn bill so STFU.

Anyhow, I would like to see legislation passed that made it a criminal offense to miss-represent the news. At the very least when an agency does this sort of thing and then is found guilty of lying to the public they should be forced to spend just as much time announcing their error as they did reporting the error in the first place. And not at 3AM either. If FOX News reports something during prime time that is found to be in error then they must report their error during prime time. That goes for everyone. I only use FOX News because they are the most egregious violators of fair and accurate news outside of China.

</soapBox>

The end is nigh, or is it? Adobe charges developers to make Flash content originally appeared on polyGeek.com on March 28, 2012.

This crap just looks like a mess and gets in the way.

Well low-and-behold there is a way to get rid of that and I feel like a fool for not looking/finding this sooner. All you have to do is click on the little little down-arrow at the upper-right corner of the variables panel then select Flex -> Show Inaccessible Member Variables.

Now your panel should look more like this – most of the time.

Useful Crap

Now the question is why is the checked by default? I’m sure there’s a reason and I’m some people need this checked but I’ve never, not once, needed to look at the inaccessible variables.

Note: this doesn’t always work. I’ve seen other variables that still show the inaccessible members but at least this fixes it most of the time.

Flash Builder debugging tip: say goodby to Inaccessible Members originally appeared on polyGeek.com on March 21, 2012.

The series is $39 which is a bargain conconsidering the depth and range of materials. But just in case there is a 30-day money back guarantee on the course so you have nothing to lose. However, I doubt if anyone would want their money back for something this well done.

Head on over and check it out. You can get the first 2 sessions free to see if you like it. The original price was $99. If the price happens to go back up then use this code to get the discount back to to $39: INTRO39.

Video Course: Build Mobile Apps in a Flash! originally appeared on polyGeek.com on March 19, 2012.

Here’s what Steven Shongrunden at flexponential.com came up with:

private function scrollToBottom():void {
	// update the verticalScrollPosition to the end of the List
	// virtual layout may require us to validate a few times
	var delta:Number = 0;
	var count:int = 0;
	while (count++ < 10){
		chatList.validateNow();
		delta = chatList.layout.getVerticalScrollPositionDelta(NavigationUnit.END);
		list.layout.verticalScrollPosition += delta;

		if (delta == 0)
			break;
	}
}

Steven is an engineer on the Flex SDK team so it’s not going to get any better than this. Visit Scrolling to the bottom of a spark List to get the details directly from the developers blog. I know this stumped me and a few people on Twitter for a few days so it can’t hurt to give this a little more attention.

Hopefully we’ll have a scrollToBottom method on the <s:List> component someday that will do this without the need for this hack.

And their post on Saving scroll position between views in a mobile Flex Application is also a nice gem to read.

Scrolling to the end of a Spark List originally appeared on polyGeek.com on January 11, 2012.

AddType application/vnd.android.package-archive apk

The file should download fine after that.

Unable to download APK files from your server originally appeared on polyGeek.com on January 11, 2012.

In a mobile app we don’t expect to see scroll bars except when actively scrolling. But with a mouse driven app we expect there to be scroll bars at all times if scrolling is an option.

Fortunately it is very simple to add scroll bars to something like the <s:List> component. All you need to do is set  interactionMode=”mouse”.

Actually it’s not that simple. That will give you a scroll bar with just the thumb visible. And it’s the mobile scroll bar thumb so it’s very thin. Not at all useful with a mouse. You’ll need to change the skinClass for the scroll bar as well.

The <s:List> ends up looking something like this:

<s:List
	id="list"
	width="100%" height="100%"
	labelField="name"
	interactionMode="mouse"
	creationComplete="{ list.scroller.verticalScrollBar.setStyle(
				'skinClass', skins.VScrollbar_skin ); }">

	<s:ArrayList>
		<fx:Object name="Brent Arnold" />
		<fx:Object name="Bryce Barrand" />
				.
				.
				.
	<s:layout>
		<s:VerticalLayout horizontalAlign="contentJustify" />
	</s:layout>

</s:List>

You can download an example app with the custom scrollbar skin here.

More information about mobile scroll bars

• flexponential > Controlling scroll bar visibility in a mobile Scroller
• help.adobe > Considerations when using scroll bars in a mobile application
• opensource.adobe > Mobile List, Scroller and Touch – Functional and Design Specification

Adding scrollbars to a mobile List component originally appeared on polyGeek.com on January 10, 2012.

In the Event.COMPLETE event handler you will be able to access the ByteArray data via urlLoader.data. All you need to do is write that to a file: fileStream.writeBytes( loader.data, 0, loader.data.length );

I would go into the details of this but Brian Rinaldi and Mihai Corlan have both written excellent and concise posts about it.

I’m only blogging about this because I spent days doing this the wrong way until finally realizing, “wait a second, this can’t be right.” You see I was using the Loader class to download the images. That works of course. But you end up with a Bitmap in the event.target.content and don’t have access to the actual ByteArray of the image that you downloaded.

That approach is just fine if all you want to do is display an image. But if you want to save it to disk then you have to go through the intermediary step of pulling the ByteArray out of the Bitmap using the JPEGEncoder or PNGEncoder. That is a wasteful step when you can just get the ByteArray data directly using the URLLoader. Plus it can be quite time consuming for large images which will halt your app while it chews on the data.

So thank you Brian and Mihai for showing me the light. :-)

Saving remote images locally in an AIR app originally appeared on polyGeek.com on January 4, 2012.