personal weblog of a tech addict
Introducing Opticon Runtime Debugger
Opticon is a runtime debugging console useful for Flash/Flex developers. It’s simple to start using in your projects. To use, follow these steps after installing the application:
1. Launch the application
2. Click the Settings button
3. Click on the SWC icon to add the OpticonConnector to your project’s build path
4. Replace your trace statements with one of the following:
- a) Opticon.log(‘message to display’)
- b) Opticon.warning(‘warning to display’)
- c) Opticon.error(‘error to display’)
Download available from:
Adobe AIR Marketplace
RIAForge
Some might ask why? This idea first appeared when AIR was Apollo and was born out of necessity (I always forget some trace statements during cleanup). Could I use global find and replace? Sure, when I’m developing with Eclipse-based IDEs but that’s not always the case.
Why not use one of the other great tools out there? After 2 years in the shadows, it’s ready to be shared with the world and, because I have a vision of where I’d like to take this so hopefully you’ll come along for the ride.
Where can I submit any bugs I find? I’ll have the bug reporting mechanism in place shortly. You’ll be notified via the application or you can subscribe to this post to be notified once that goes live.
My version doesn’t include the connector. What can I do? This happened as a result of a build error. Visit this link to download the connector Get Opticon Connector.
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Upgrading Flash Builder
March 1, 2010 - 8:46 pm
Tags: Adobe, AIR, Flash, Flex, OSX
Posted in Adobe, Apple, Flex, General, OSX | No comments
Whether you’re upgrading because you’re using BETA versions that change rather frequently or upgrading to the next major release, you don’t want to lose all your hard work invested in configuring your setup. Here’s how I handle it and hopefully it’s useful to you. If you have other cool ways to persist workflows between upgrades, [...]
Using a Custom AdvancedDataGridHeaderRenderer to Display a Custom Image
February 9, 2010 - 10:38 am
Tags: AIR, Flash Platform, Flex
Posted in AIR, Adobe, Flash, Flex | No comments
You decide to use an AdvancedDataGrid to display your data and for one of the columns you would prefer to use an icon instead of a text label to indicate the kind of data this column represents.
First step is building the renderer. You can use either MXML or ActionScript but for this example we’ll [...]
Joining the Adobe Community Professionals for 2010
January 18, 2010 - 7:33 pm
Tags: Adobe, AIR, Community
Posted in AIR, Adobe, Flash, Flex | No comments
Formerly the Adobe Community Experts program, this is a collective of awesome individuals who exhibit expertise in various Adobe product areas from Acrobat to Photoshop, Flash, Cold Fusion, Flex, AIR and many, many more. Comprised of community leaders, this group has a worldwide presence and expounds the virtues of Adobe to the masses through the [...]
Double-headed Arrows with GraphicsUtil
I recently ran across this awesome utility class, GraphicsUtil, created by Noel Billig. It allows the ability to draw lines with an arrow on one end using the drawing API in AS3. This proved useful for a project I was working on. In addition to its default behavior however, I needed the utility class to [...]
Overlaying the Flex SDK with the AIR 2.0 SDK on OSX
December 4, 2009 - 7:55 am
Tags: AIR, Mac, OSX
Posted in AIR, Adobe, Apple, Flash, Flex, OSX | No comments
Since I develop with multiple IDEs, I maintain the latest releases of the Flex and AIR SDKs in a centralized location outside of their default install locations. This made enabling the AIR 2.0 SDK simple for me as all I had to do was the following:
1. Duplicate my Flex 3 SDK path
2. Rename the duplicate [...]
ZamfBrowser – ZendAMF Service Browser
November 13, 2009 - 7:22 pm
Tags: AIR, Flash, Flex, PHP, ZendAmf
Posted in AIR, Apple, Flash, Flex, OSX Server | 4 comments
Using the Flex IViewCursor to Manage an ArrayCollection
One of the nice things about the Flex framework is the various utility classes that make it so much easier for you to accomplish your development tasks than you’d be able to without them. One such class, in my opinion, is mx.collections.IViewCursor.
Cool Features in Flash Builder 4
I was recently working on a project in the latest beta release of the forthcoming Flash Builder 4 and wanted to point out the new contextual help feature. What’s nice about this feature is that I had just added the highlighted event to the event class and was busy implementing it in a view class and because of FB4’s new code-hinting muscle I was able to see everything that I had documented in the event class concerning the event without having to have the event class open.
AMFPHP Fatal Errors After PHP 5.3 Upgrade (Part 2)
As promised in Part 1, I’m documenting yet another issue that must be addressed in your AMFPHP installation upon upgrading to PHP 5.3. This issue stems from the usage of the [code lang="php"]eregi_replace[/code] function that has been deprecated in PHP 5.3. If you run into a fatal error in your AMFPHP application with the message [code]Function eregi_replace() is deprecated[/code], you have (2) options:
AMFPHP Fatal Errors After PHP 5.3 Upgrade (Part 1)
If you experience the following error in your AMFPHP-based applications:
January 15, 2010 - 6:45 am
This looks like a promising tool.
But for some reason i can’t make it work – when i click on the red swc icon – i am prompt to pick a directory to download the swc file. i do that – click save and nothing happens.
any suggestions?
January 15, 2010 - 7:42 am
Thanks for the kind words gavri. Looks like this was the result of a build error.
I’ve included a download link in the original post. Please use this SWC to Opticon-enable your projects until the next release, which should be soon…;)
January 15, 2010 - 10:18 pm
thanks for the update.
works like a charm, and highly recommended
January 16, 2010 - 6:14 am
Bugbase now viewable @ http://bugs.otuome.com/opticon/view
Bug reporter is on the way…:)