Styling the Flex ToggleButtonBar

March 9th, 2010 § 0

Yesterday I was working with the ToggleButtonBar in Flex and I wanted to change its appearance. I went over to the trusty Flex 3 style explorer and made some adjustments until I got it looking how I wanted. I copied the generated CSS, pasted it into my stylesheet and was ready to move on. When I ran my application however, I noticed that most of the styles had not taken effect. WTF?, I said. After some poking around and trying various configurations I came up with what I think is an acceptable solution.

When you copy the CSS from the style explorer you'll get something like this:

ToggleButtonBar {
   buttonHeight: 41;
   buttonWidth: 109;
   buttonStyleName: "mytoggleButtonBarButtonStyle";
   firstButtonStyleName: "mytoggleButtonBarFirstButtonStyle";
   lastButtonStyleName: "mytoggleButtonBarLastButtonStyle";
   selectedButtonTextStyleName: "mytoggleButtonBarSelectedButtonStyle";
}
 
.mytoggleButtonBarButtonStyle {
   highlightAlphas: 0, 0;
   fillAlphas: 1, 1, 1, 1;
   fillColors: #333333, #333333, #ff9900, #ff9900;
   color: #ffffff;
   textRollOverColor: #ffffff;
   textSelectedColor: #ffffff;
   themeColor: #0000cc;
   fontSize: 14;
   fontWeight: normal;
}
 
.mytoggleButtonBarFirstButtonStyle {
   cornerRadius: 9;
}
 
.mytoggleButtonBarLastButtonStyle {
   cornerRadius: 9;
}
 
.mytoggleButtonBarSelectedButtonStyle {
   color: #ffffff;
   fontSize: 14;
   fontWeight: normal;
   fontStyle: normal;
   textDecoration: none;
}
 

What I found is you need to copy the styles from the .mytoggleButtonBarButtonStyle class to the other styles that are generated for you. Obviously keep in mind that you only want to copy the properties that are going to be the same for each state, otherwise you'll overwrite your changes. This worked for me, hope it helps.

RIA’s go Hollywood

January 5th, 2010 § 0

Hollywood

My latest article is up at InsideRIA. It's titled, "RIA's go Hollywood: An Introduction to Integrating Video Into Your Application." It provides an introductory look into how to best incorporate video into your applications. Special thanks to Josh Reed from Reed Multimedia for helping me out with shooting and editing the video.

InsideRIA Article

September 15th, 2009 § 0

I had the pleasure to work with the fine folks at InsideRIA a couple months back to write an article on UX and Flex. I'm happy to say that the article went live today. Check it out, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

A Flex Developer's Guide to User Experience Work Flows and Best Practices


New MAX Factoid Widget Thingy

August 21st, 2009 § 0

My Current iPhone Home Screen

August 19th, 2009 § 0

I think it's cool to see what apps people are using on their phones and what they think is important enough to have on their home screen. It's a good way to find new apps you may not have seen before. Here's my current screen.

iPhone Home Screen

iPhone Home Screen

K.I.S.S. My App

August 6th, 2009 § 0

You're probably familiar with the acronym K.I.S.S, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Let's face it, our lives our complicated enough. As designers and developers of software applications we have a unique opportunity to reduce some of those complexities by building applications that help make people's lives easier but also by making those apps as simple and easy to use as possible.

Albert Einstein put it nicely when he said "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." This is an important adage to keep in mind when we're designing and developing our applications. We're all painfully familiar with the concept of scope creep.  Where the scope of a project gradually increases and before you know it, it has become unmanageable and impossible to complete on time or within budget. There is a similar concept known as "feature creep" where features keep getting added to an application because "oooh, that would be cool," or "that would be nice to have too." Often times we're our own worst enemies in this regard. We've just learned a new technique or about a new piece of technology that is available and we just have to use it! The problem is, if the feature isn't essential to the core function of the app it's just noise. Something to get in the way and confuse our users. Take a look at Google. When they started out they were just a search engine. When you went to google.com there was no question what you were supposed to do. One box, one or two buttons and you were off. Simple, efficient, and it got the job done.

80% of users are what as known as "perpetual intermediates." Basically this means that they quickly progress beyond the beginner stage of using your application to the intermediate stage where they have a good grasp of how to use the tool to get their job done. Very few will progress to the "advanced" user stage. So, rather than spending valuable time and resources on developing features that few, if any people will ever use focus that energy on a select few features that will help your users achieve their goals. Center your efforts around making those features as simple to use and as effective as possible. People don't rave about a program because it has hundreds of features, they rave about applications that help them achieve their goals in the simplest, most efficient way possible. Keep it simple.

Detroit Red Wings News AIR Application

May 1st, 2009 § 0

With the NHL Playoffs in full swing and my beloved Red Wings starting the second round this evening against the Ducks I thought I'd post this little app I made a while back. It's just a simple AIR app that pulls in Red Wing RSS and Twitter feeds. Enjoy.

Download

Running Tweetdeck on Multiple Machines

March 12th, 2009 § 3

I've recently become a Tweetdeck convert. I love that you can setup multiple groups to organize the people you follow and only read what you're really interested in. The problem I ran into is that I use multiple machines. Setting up my groups and assigning people to them on each machine was not something I was really excited about. Tweetdeck doesn't have a built-in export feature (at least not that I've found) but there is a fairly easy way to copy your settings and preferences from one machine to another. There are two files where this information is stored; preferences_username.xml and td_26_username.db (not sure if that number is the same for everyone but you get the idea). All you need to do is copy those files from one machine to the other and voila! The paths to the files are below.

Mac: user/Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast[bunch of numbers]/Local Store/

Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\TweetDeckFast[bunch of numbers]\Local Store\

It's not ideal, especially if you make a lot of changes to your settings but it's better than nothing.

UPDATE: A reader just informed me that you may need to change the files permissions from 'Read Only' on the DB file before you can update the DB file on the machine you are copying to.

FLARToolkit AR Example

March 10th, 2009 § 1

Here's my first crack at augmented reality (AR) with the FLARToolkit. The monster head was created in Lightwave by my boss, brought into Blender and exported to Actionscript. Still lots of things to work out but still a very cool technology.

AR Monster Head

AR Monster Head

Cloud Computing Jobs on the Rise

March 4th, 2009 § 0

In support of my series on cloud computing here is a brief post and a chart showing the dramatic increase in cloud computing jobs. As the post points out, increases in jobs often precede shifts in the technology.

Cloud Computing Jobs a Leading Indicator

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