Programming in Poetry

So I wanted to put together a post for features that would help with development in flex I am going to be updating this list as it grows and hopefully cross some out as they get implemented or I figure out a work around

1. When you add a source path to your flex project that is not in your current file structure Flex builder should not import the CVS folders as source. Flex Builder should handle these folders as CVS folders and allow you to utilize the cvs (or team) components in Elipse. The same should also be true when you are adding a library project. 

You read the title right! I was browsing Google finance like I tend to do when I have some spare time and I noticed a nice gray gradient flash while the chart was loading. I said to myself “WTF that looks like the default background for a flex application!” So I had to further investigate the google page source. Fortunately, I run Mozilla with add block enabled, making it extremely easy to get the source of the url that contains the swf. I just right clicked on “Block” and then clicked on “Save Link As..”; this is the follwing url I put together:

http://finance.google.com/finance/chart9.swf

note: If you try to navigate to this page by itself you will just get a gray background and a bunch of run time errors if you have the flash debugger player installed. I believe the reason for this is because they are using the Flex Ajax bridge to populate the chart.

Once you have the swf url you can plug it into James Ward’s site:

http://www.jamesward.org/is_it_flex/

Here is a flex developers replication of Google finance from scratch:

http://www.stretchmedia.ca/blog/index.cfm/2007/8/14/Google-Finance-with-Flex-Code

If the Google developer’s want to hide the gray backgournd a little better they have to set the style backgroundColor to white. It looks like they already set the two values for the backgroundGradientColors to white.