In any GUI tool, one of the most popular components is the one that shows
data in a table format like JTable in Java or Datawindow in PowerBuilder. The
Adobe Flex 2 version of such a component is called DataGrid. In any UI
framework, the robustness of such a component depends on formatting and
validating utilities as well as a whole suite of data input controls:
CheckBoxes, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, all sorts of Inputs, Masks, and so on.
Using theatrical terminology, the role of the king is played by his
entourage. Practically speaking, touching up the DataGrid is touching up a
large portion of the Flex framework.
We'll start by upgrading the standard DataGrid to a "destination-aware"
control capable of populating itself. Next, we'll look at the task of
formatting DataGrid columns and that would naturally lead us to a hidden
treasury of the Flex DataGrid - the Data... (more)
A typical Java developer knows that when you need to develop a GUI for a Java
application, Swing is the tool. Eclipse SWT also has a number of followers,
but the majority of people use Java Swing. For the past 10 years, it was a
given that Swing development wouldn't be easy; you have to master working
with the event-dispatch thread, GridBaglayout, and the like. Recently, the
NetBeans team created a nice GUI designer called Matisse, which was also
ported to MyEclipse. Prior to Matisse, JBuilder had the best Swing designer,
but it was too expensive. Now a good designer comes with N... (more)
In Part 1 (CFDJ, Vol. 8, issue 10) we introduced the destination-aware grid,
formatters, and renderers. In this article we are continuing our discussion
about datagrid renderers and...
RadioButtonGroupBox as Drop-In Renderer
We can apply similar techniques to RadioButton controls. The following code
snippet suggests how the group of RadioButton controls can be used as a
drop-in item renderer (and editor). Instead of an onValue/offValue pair, we
are introducing an array of options (we could have gone further and upgraded
to , which is similar to the Bu... (more)
This is a book excerpt from the book RIch Internet applications with Adobe
Flex and Java.
Configuring the Server-Side Destination and Proxy
For security reasons (similar to the Java sandbox concept), Flash clients can
only access the domains they come from, unless other servers declare,
explicitly or implicitly, trust to SWF files downloaded from our domain by a
corresponding record in a crossdomain.xml file. But our portfolio SWF wasn't
loaded from finance.yahoo.com, and we aren't allowed to install
crossdomain.xml on the Yahoo! servers. We'll use another technique called
Flex p... (more)
I’d like to use this opportunity and invite Flex developers living in
Europe to attend our Advanced Flex Master Class in Brussels, Belgium on March
1 and 2, 2010.
This question we get on almost every new client project: “We’re
struggling with handling of null values for numeric data types in Flex/Java
projects.
Every time there’s an update, we end up replacing the original nulls with
zeros when the user didn’t actually change that value.
Have you guys come up with a silver bullet for handling numeric nulls?”
Consider a Java method with a Double parameter. You pass uninitialized ... (more)