RIA: Reason reincarnated for the web?

Not sure how many folks have seen this. A music buddy of mine just sent me the link. After checking it our for about 5 seconds, I promptly replied back to him, “THANKS ***HOLE FOR FINDING YET ANOTHER SITE THAT WILL SUCK AT MY PRODUCTIVITY!!!!”. So now I pass the curse on to you

Web 2.0 version of Reason-ish Application - link

I absolutely love the stomp boxes and the drum interface. I dislike the 808-type bass control as I’d rather be able to input the notes via some piano roll view. I can’t wait to see what new instruments they add to this. Maybe I won’t have to purchase Reason for the Mac after all.

Riddle: Some more word play

The English language is fascinating to me and I learn something new quite often. I think the fact that it is an amalgam of so many other languages, some closely related and some not, that makes it a truly powerful language. Anyhow, I heard a word the other day that is not widely used or known. I have probably never used it in casual conversation but do appreciate the meaning.

Can you name a word containing 4 consecutive vowels whose meaning is an adjective for being a kiss-ass?

Can you name another word containing a pair of consecutive vowels, repeated consecutively and whose only other letter is found in the word above?

Please refrain from answering in the comments until I have posted the answers in the answers page. BTW, the last two riddles have had their answers posted.

Flex Builder Tip: shortcuts for capitalization & commenting

My buddy just shared a few new (new to us at least) keyboard shortcuts in Flex Builder that you might enjoy. Keep in mind this was discovered on FB3 & a mac. Highlight some text in either an MXML or AS3 file.

• to quick comment: apple + shift + c
• to quick capitalize: apple + shift + x

Ping back if you know of some more that a) work for FB and b) have the windows equivalent.  I’d be really interested in finding the two shortcuts that reverse the two above.

Riddle: some word play

Heard this on my NPR.  This isn’t verbatim but you should get the gist:

Find a 6-letter hyphenated word that means “eager”.  Then for a bonus find the 6-letter hyphenated word that is the opposite of “eager” which contains all the same letters as the synonym except for the 4th and 6th letter.

Please refrain from posting your answers in the comments until after the answer has been posted next week.  Thanks.

Riddle: Arithmetic Gone Awry

Look at this equation.

26 = 47

Now, by only rearranging the numbers in any fashion and without adding any arithmetic signs (+, -, *, or /), can you make this equation true?

jwolib: Pod gets a much needed update

Since most people instantiate container type classes via MXML rather than in AS3, it made sense to be able to add title bar components to Pod via MXML rather than the tedious addTitleBarComponent method.

Now if you want to add title bar components to a Pod instance, you can do so declaratively.   Check out titleBarChildren.

You can view an implementation of this here - link

jwolib: new example files and srcview uploaded

project update - link

Flex Drag n’ Drop Lib Docs uploaded

Again, just an update for the dNdLib docs:

dNdLib project home - link
dNdLib docs - link

AppCoreLib: Finally got the ASDocs uploaded

Nothing more that that. Check em out here:

AppCoreLib project home - link
AppCoreLib docs - link

jwoLib: PaginatedItemsControlBase

I finally got around to using Flex Builder 3 for my personal projects since the project I am working for migrated to it awhile back. Call me a late adopter.

Generally when you think of pagination, you might think immediately about returned search results from google.  You know, the little arrows down at the bottom indicating the previous and next pages with links to the pages in between them.  Now to me, a RIA will hopefully find a better means of implementing paginated data, whether that be via internal scrollbars or collapsible/expandable* content.  But sometimes a design or use-case doesn’t allow for it.  A good implementation of this can be found on the Kuler app.

I really like their implementation but since that design and custom functionality might not fit with a future design/use-case I wanted to find a reusable solution.  So how does one go about formalizing that sort of functionality?

The first step is to disconnect the functionality from the design implementation.  An interface is a good candidate for this as it ensures that regardless of the UI, you can expect a certain feature set.  Enter IPaginatedItemsControl.   I won’t go into detail about it as you can read the docs but suffice it to say that this is the starting point for building any paginated items control.  The next step is actually building out some of the functionality and making a container to host the custom controls.  Check out PaginatedItemsControlBase.  Its basically an empty box with most of the needed functionality.  All it lacks are the controls in order to browse the paginated content.  Some might ask why I even bothered with any interface.  This was intended to allow a developer to customize the inner workings of the implementor if they found the PaginatedItemsControlBase too restrictive.

Anyway, I have a new build on the project home as well as updated documentation on all the jwoLib components.  Certainly sound off as I appreciate the feedback and criticism.

* Being somewhat of a English/grammar guy, I really don’t understand the rules for adjective modifiers.  Logic would suggest that since collapse and expand are antonyms that their adjective modifier would be the same: verb + modifier.  This is not the case though.  It seems there is no rhyme or reason to how these modifiers are selected.  Anyone?