Getting Flex Builder to work on 64-bit Windows

I’ve been running the 64-bit version of XP and now the 64-bit version of Windows 7 for the past 2+ years, and I’ve always had issues with Flex: Blank build path windows (when right clicking on a project’s properties) – having to manage the project files manually Weird generated asset errors I think getting setup with Flex and eclipse requires an unnecessary amount of knowledge…...

Flex/AS3/Flash 9 Casting Problems

Today I noticed something particularly annoying about ActionScript 3/Flex/Flash: Casting. I know of two ways to cast something from one type to another: 1.  var myvar:Type1 = mything as Type1; // does not work OR 2.  var myvar:Type1 = Type1 (mything); // works! I was using the “as” keyword, and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t cast my string to a number.  I finally drilled down, and...

The Pi Day Challenge

This last week I had the opportunity to help a friend create www.pidaychallenge.com.  That friend is Matt Plummer – he was a teacher of mine in high school who inspired me to learn flash programming.  Up until I started working with Matt, I didn’t even own a computer, and now I’m working full-time as a Flex developer and launching all kinds of web startups.  Thanks Plum. It’s amazing what...

Flash and Flex Communication

I assume it’s because I didn’t search for the right terms, but I couldn’t find anything good about communicating between Flash 9/10 and Flex. I found some posts on LocalConnection, and this post… but the issue with LocalConnection is that you can only have on instance open at once.  So, if you build something and a user opens two tabs of it, it will fail to connect to the second instance. ...

iGoogle style component for Flex

Screen shot (CLICK FOR RUNNING SAMPLE AND SOURCE CODE): This week I needed to build a customizable home/landing page in a web application built in Flex.  I wanted to give the user the ability to add, remove, and position different “widgets”.  I’ll upload my paper mockups early next week… I looked all over the web for a solid sample of an iGoogle style example in Flex and really...