Today I encountered some strange behaviour when using the [ArrayElementType] tag. I had a piece of code which looked like this:

package {
	import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
	[Bindable]
	public class MetaData {
		public var ac:ArrayCollection
		[ArrayElementType("nl.flexperiments.test.TestObject")]
		public var ac2:ArrayCollection;
	}
}

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Right, it’s been more than a month now, time to round up this tutorial. If you haven’t read the previous parts, here’s part 1, and here’s part 2.

In this chapter we’re going to fine-tune our component. The basic functionality is in it, but there isn’t really much communication with the outside world going on. We can change that using events, meta-tags, asdoc and we are also going to do some styling. more…

In part two of this tutorial, we’re gonna create the actual component. We left off with a flex library and a folder structure.

If you haven’t read the first part, click here.

Create a new actionscript class and name it after your component. Also, decide wether your class should extend an existing class. In this example it makes sense to extend the textinput class, which will provide the basic functionality. If your component will be part of the interface, you should extend sprite, or any underlying class of sprite. If your component doesn’t have any graphical interface, like a currency converter, you do not need to extend any class. more…

Not too long ago, someone asked me for some tips and tricks to write good components in AS3. Not that I’m the best coder or the most structured person, but when you’ve build some components, you’ll find that you’ll run in the same problems over and over again. Most of the problems you can avoid by starting to write down what your component actually should do. So you first can close flex builder .

For who is this tutorial? Well, I assume you’ve done some coding in AS3, so I won’t explain if-statements and for-loops. Anyone should be able to follow this tutorial, since there won’t be very exotic code in the examples. more…

This week, I had to do some flash work for TFE. As soon as a fired up flash and started programming I realized how lazy you get when programming in eclipse. I mean, auto import, code completion, all kinds of shortcuts… Compared to the flash IDE it’s heaven . Now, I know that there are many IDE’s for flash Actionscript like SePY and FlashDevelop, but none of them really satisfies me like Eclipse does. The only problem with using Eclipse as Actionscript editor is the fact that you cannot build fla files in Flex Builder… or can you? more…

Damn I hate the new flex builder. Flex Builder 2.0 wasn’t good, but the new Flex Builder is just plain rubbish! I wish adobe didn’t bought macromedia, I’m sure MM wouldn’t release such a crappy product and have the guts to call it a complete new version. FB3 doesn’t even deserve the name beta, let alone final!

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