Viewing by month: March 2008

Mar 31 2008

cf.Objective() - Hotel cutoff date extended!

Steven Hauer just sent good news - if you haven't yet registered for cf.Objective() or booked your room, the cutoff for the $120 room rate at the Crowne Plaza St. Paul is now April 8th. After that date the rate is not guaranteed.

Links:

  1. Hotel reservations - http://events.ichotelsgroup.com/DPRD-76XTB6/MSPSP/website/
  2. Conference and registration - http://www.cfobjective.com
  3. Flex-based session scheduler, for those who have registered - http://cfobjective.firemoss.com

0 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 8:10 AM - Categories: Conferences and Speaking Engagements

Mar 27 2008

Photoshop Express: Novice User Experience

I am by no means a designer. I do like to take pictures now and then, retouching them and sharing them with friends and family. While I've got CS3, it's an intimidating and complex product for my needs. This probably places my in the demographic targeted by Photoshop Express: nondesigners who want to do a little retouching and sharing.

I fired up the beta this morning, and here's the summary of my experience.

No custom loader?

If it's this high profile of a RIA, I'd expect a more branded version of the stock Flex application loader, even if it's just the Ps glyph over the progress bar.

Better-than-average Flex form validation

I'm not a huge fan of default Flex form validation, where you just glow the incorrect fields. I love how the signup form alerts you with what's wrong then returns you to the form with the incorrect fields highlighted, still showing intelligent messages on focus. The glowing fields did omit passwords not matching, though - probably a quick fix!

And is it a coincidence that my captcha contained "PDF"?

Verify account? What the heck?

Why am I taken to an HTML page asking me to verify my account instead of having this shown in the main Flex app? Why does this link take me to another HTML page that then links me to the Flex app? Kind of a wonky workflow that could've been done without ever leaving the app...

Quick Start -> Upload Photos

Oh my, this is slick. Someone really thought through getting a new user started. You want to get started immediately? Click Quick Start to drop to your library and be immediately prompted to upload a photo. Select a photo (or photos) and you get a great Flex UI showing you progress of your uploads. 54% and waiting...

Opening a photo

Ok, I see my photo..click. Nothing. We're so used to the Web that we've become single-click beings. Double-click...ok, now I'm editing. I guess I could've used the "Photo Options" or "Edit Photo" button, too, but some sort of action on single click would be nice.

Autocorrect and other basic tools

I expected to click "Autocorrect" and get a corrected image. What I got instead was a great surprise - it gives you its best guess as well as thumbnails of a few other correction candidates. Absolutely great for a nondesigner like myself! Rollover a thumb, and it'll show it to you in the large space. Click and hold "View Original" at any time to see what you started with. Sliiiick.

Ok, I'm all corrected and balanced...let's share this out so you can see what I've done.

Sharing Photos

Where's the Share button? Can't find it on the editing screen. Let's try Saving to see where I go...

Nothing saying "Share," but there's an E-Mail Photo and Create Album option. Maybe an Album is shareable to you?

Select two images (edited and an original copy I uploaded), create an album, and "Share Album," and it looks like we're good to go. Maybe a changing "Create Album" to "Create and Share Albums" would be good.

Anyhow, I'm now sharing the Album on My Gallery, but I'm not sure how to give you a URL to it. I could e-mail friends, but I'd rather have a link.

Ah, ok. Once in your gallery, you can choose an Album, click "Link" or "Embed," and you get some bits. Might be nice to just show these options on the prior screen as well as on the Album viewer itself.

Embed is cool! Here's a preview and link to the album

Summary

Absolutely great tool when it comes to allowing a nonphotographer / designer like myself to tweak pictures and catalog my photos. It took me a bit to learn how to use it, but I won't be forgetting what I found. I think there's a bit of room for making things easier on the user when it comes to sharing, but I dig it.

4 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 8:19 AM - Categories: Flex | See Also

Mar 25 2008

Flex scheduler for cf.Objective available!

Yesterday the Flex-based scheduler for the 2008 cf.Objective() conference went live. I've had fun building it, and feel it's a good example of what's possible with ColdFusion, Flex, and about ten hours of time.

If you're not attending but what like to give it a whirl, feel free to play with the staging copy / play database, where we don't audit e-mail addresses for corresponding attendees.

5 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 8:18 AM - Categories: Flex and ColdFusion | Conferences and Speaking Engagements

Mar 20 2008

Flex "RadioButton" ListItemRenderer

I'm becoming an ever increasing fan of the way the Flex visual components were built. Yeah, some things are private when protected would be nice, but for the kind of data-focused work I do I find myself rarely getting stuck. On top of that, building Flex widgets is the perfect 3:00AM brain exercise for when our 3 month old daughter wakes me up.

Anyhow, I needed a better way to show long lists of radio buttons in a UI. Using a repeater just kind of stank - I wanted something that worked like a normal list, but showed a RadioButton beside each item. Thirty minutes later, I was in business:

I decided to blog it as it's a dead simple example of how to extend a base Flex component, add additional visual children, and control both the layout and data-focused aspects through the UIComponent "lifecycle" methods and Flex events.

Here's the code for the renderer:

package com.firemoss.controls.list
{
   import mx.controls.RadioButton;
   import mx.controls.listClasses.BaseListData;
   import mx.controls.listClasses.ListBase;
   import mx.controls.listClasses.ListItemRenderer;
   import mx.events.ListEvent;
   
   public class RadioButtonListItemRenderer extends ListItemRenderer
   {
   
      /**
       * Radio button shown at left of control.
       */
      private var radioButton:RadioButton;
      
      /**
       * List owning this renderer.
       */
      private var list:ListBase;
      
      /**
       * Override createChildren() to create a radio button.
       */
      override protected function createChildren():void
      {
         super.createChildren();
         
         // Create our radio button and add it to the display list.          
         this.radioButton = new RadioButton();
         this.addChild(this.radioButton);
      }
      
      /**
       * Override updateDisplayList to position radio button
       * and shift label.
       */
      override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void
      {
         // Shift what super thinks of width by our radio's width...          
         super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth - this.radioButton.width, unscaledHeight);
         
         // For my purposes, a hard width is fine.      
         
         this.radioButton.width = 25;
         
         // Place our radio          
         this.radioButton.x = 6;
         this.radioButton.y = this.height / 2 - this.radioButton.height / 2;

         // Slide that label over          
         this.label.x = this.radioButton.width;
         
      }
      
      /**
       * Override the listData setter to add listener for changes to the owner (List selection change)
       */
      override public function set listData(value:BaseListData):void
      {
         super.listData = value;
         
         // If we're in the right condition          
         if (value.owner is ListBase)
         {
            // Remove event listeners from any prior assigned list             
            if (this.list)
            {
               this.list.removeEventListener(ListEvent.CHANGE, ownerChangeHandler);
            }
   
            // Keep the list around             
            this.list = value.owner as ListBase;
            
            // Watch the list for changes to its selection             
            this.list.addEventListener(ListEvent.CHANGE, ownerChangeHandler, false, 0, true);
         }
      }
      
      
      /**
       * When the list's selection changes, update the state of the radio button.
       */
      private function ownerChangeHandler(event:ListEvent):void
      {
         // If the list has a selection and it's this renderer's data, check the button          
         this.radioButton.selected = (this.data != null && this.data == this.list.selectedItem);
      }
      
   }
}

Enjoy, and happy listing!

7 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 2:44 PM - Categories: Flex

Mar 6 2008

ColdFusion wins Jolt award!

I love the Jolt awards - they're always a great way to filter new products and services for those that are really worth paying attention to.

Given its usual rough-and-tumble relationship with the software development community and especially its press, I was super happy to see that ColdFusion 8 just won the Jolt for Web Development! Not the "productivity" award, but the overall you-better-try-this Jolt!

2 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 1:41 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX | See Also

Categories

Monthly Archives

Search Archives

Favorite Links