Archive for October, 2008

Resizing Scrollbars in Flex

Published
by
wouter
on October 5, 2008
in Actionscript 3.0 and Flex
. 2 Comments

I had to create bigger scrollbars, for a flex project which had to run on touchscreens. Their isn’t a real style or property which enables you to do this, but thanks to programmatic skinning, it is quite easy.

First of all, create a class which extends mx.skins.halo.ScrollTrackSkin. In this class, you override the measuredWidth() and updateDisplayList() functions:

override public function get measuredWidth():Number
{
	return 50;
}
 
override protected function updateDisplayList(w:Number, h:Number):void
{
	super.updateDisplayList(50, h);
}

After that, create a class which extends mx.skins.halo.ScrollThumbSkin. In this class, you have to provide the same methods:

override public function get measuredWidth():Number
{
	return 50;
}
 
override protected function updateDisplayList(w:Number, h:Number):void
{
	super.updateDisplayList(50, h);
}

The last class you have to create, is for the scrollbar arrows. This class extends mx.skins.halo.ScrollArrowSkin. Again, you have to override some methods: measuredWidth, measuredHeight and updateDisplayList:

override public function get measuredWidth():Number
{
	return 50;
}
 
override public function get measuredHeight():Number
{
	return 50;
}
 
override protected function updateDisplayList(w:Number, h:Number):void
{
	super.updateDisplayList(50, 50);
}

The final step, is to link these classes in your css file:

ScrollBar
{
    trackSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollTrackSkin");
    downArrowDisabledSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    downArrowDownSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    downArrowOverSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    downArrowUpSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    thumbDownSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollThumbSkin");
    thumbOverSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollThumbSkin");
    thumbUpSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollThumbSkin");
    upArrowDisabledSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    upArrowDownSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    upArrowOverSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
    upArrowUpSkin: ClassReference("com.mydomain.BigScrollArrowSkin");
}

Programmatic skinning allows you to do even more, you can completely control the layout, and drawing of the components through code.

Good luck!

Flash On The Beach 2008

Published
by
wouter
on October 3, 2008
in Conferences
. 0 Comments

Awesome.

I got back from the conference yesterday, feeling both inspired and depressed (because it’s over again). We got to see a lot of great sessions, and I think most of us returned with a lot of new ideas, starting with reserving 20 minutes each day to play around :-)

It all started with Rob Chiu’s impressive sequence, which perfectly set the tone for the next 3 days:

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

These were the sessions I attended after that:

Monday:

  • Richard Galvan – Flash Now and in the Future: Some new, and some old stuff on the Flash platform
  • Marco Casario – Mash-up widgets with Adobe AIR: Showed us how easy it is to incorporate API’s in your AIR apps
  • Branden Hall – Brilliant Ideas that I’ve Blatantly Stolen: Inspired me to (code-)play some more with Flash itself.
  • Geoff Stearns – YouTube Lessons Learned: Interesting to see some background info on one of the most used swfs on the internet. Saw some funny youtube video’s aswell :-P
  • Erik Natzke – Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Play: One of my last year’s favorites, showed some more background on how some of the drawing was done.
  • James Paterson – Modulating a Lot: This guy creates some CRAZY WEIRD interactive animations. One of this year’s drug addicts.

Tuesday:

  • Mike Downey – The business side of AIR: how to sell your clients on AIR apps
  • Jeremy Thorp – Emergence
  • Grant Skinner – Things Every ActionScript Developer Should Know: Great to see that Grant is telling the same that we are teaching our students
  • Jam Session: Keith, Mario, Joa, Andre and Carlos each did a 10 minute session showing us a selection of the stuff they do
  • Lee Brimelow – Platform Jiu-Jitsu: Saw some cool wrestling video’s, linked to Flash platform idea’s
  • Robert Hodgin – The Best 8 to 12 Hours of my Life: Personally made the book store sell out their Processing books last year :-)

Wednesday:

  • Geoff Lillemon – Stop and Smell the Internet with Geoff Lillemon and Anita Fontaine: Really weird (but cool), Tim Burton style fine art.
  • Andre Michelle – Adobe made some noise! Andre is one of my favorite speakers, the stuff he does with audio in actionscript is crazy.
  • Koen de Weggheleire – Play With Pixels, bitmap manipulation with AS3: co-owner of Happy Banana, funny session about matrices and bitmapdata.
  • Mario Klingemann – Here be Pixels: This guy blows my balls of every year. The way he solves certain problems is just crazy…
  • Jonathan Harris – The Art of Surveillance and Self-Exposure: Stood in front of 800 flashers, saying there hasn’t been made a masterpiece in flash yet…

Thank you John & the FOTB team to throw another great conference, thanks to all the speakers for inspiring me (see you in Miami?) and thanks to my employer for giving me a chance to attend FOTB08!