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Merge folders on copy instead of replace on OSX

When trying to copy a folder onto another of the the same name in OSX you will only get prompted to replace the items and not merge them. This is a real pain in the ass if you’re trying to merge folders and if the folder has several other nested folders.

I just came across this exact scenario trying to update the Flex SDK and copy in the Datavisualisation components (as instructed here) because it just replaced the SDK!

Anyway to resolve this copying from terminal can behave like you would expect:

cp -R -n /SoureFolder/* /TargetFolder/

so in the case of the datavis components:

cp -R -n /Users/[username]/Downloads/datavisualization_sdk3.5/*
/Applications/Adobe\ Flex\ Builder\ 3\ Plug-in/sdks/3.5.0/

Flex framework component localization

Having just gone through far too many hoops to get a the flex framework localized I thought I’d share a few notes here.

All I was trying to achieve was to ensure the Flex components (mx) adhere to a selected locale so things like date choosers and other locale-dependent components could be tailored to the users chosen language.

This is easy to do but took a long time to figure out, so for the benefit of others (and no doubt myself in the future):

Localizing the flex framework

• Go to http://ttfx.org/Tontons_Flexeurs/BabelFlex.html and download your chosen language(s)
• Extract the zip and copy the fr_FR (or whatever lang) to
  [your flex installation]/sdk/3.4.0/frameworks/locale/
• Add the chosen language to your flex compiler arguments -locale=fr_FR,en_US

And you’re done! Setting resourceManager.localeChain = ['fr_FR', 'en_US'] or whichever language you want will then change the days of week and month names etc to suit the selected language.

For something so simple I had to do ALOT of digging, props to @fitzchev for the babelflex link.
WHY ARE THESE NOT IN THE SDK BY DEFAULT????????!!!!!!
Apparently they are in Flex4 which is good news but Flex has been around for how long now? Part of the reason this took so long to figure out is because I refused to believe that I had to either write my own or find others’ translations for such major languages as French, Spanish, German etc.

Before finding the BabelFlex conversions I’d also explored the process for creating my own localized framework bundles but that’s covered well in the BabelFlex readme in all of the downloads so head over there if you need to.

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New Theme

Didn’t really like the old theme, I felt it was a bit busy, the font was hard to read and it had gotten a little too common as freebie WordPress themes tend to do so when slackers like yours truly get their dirty mitts on them.

This theme is called RS17 from Theme Lab based on a CSS Template by RamblingSoul.

I’ve started making some minor adjustments which will try to keep doing to make it a bit more individual.

Optimal RIA development hardware

No matter how much we spend on new hardware, progress bars, spinning timers, system freezes and occasionally crashes are a familiar site when developing RIAs. My Macbook Pro seems to be fast approaching the end of it’s life and I’ve started to think about a new machine.

So I thought rather than spend forever looking up hardware specs, recommended platforms and whatever, I’d just do the lazy thing and put it out there to the #lazyweb and see what came up.

Within moments the ever-helpful seantheflexguy responded with his spec and his endorsement of his setup:

Well, that was very useful and I thought how great it would be if we could collate more information about other RIA developers’ setups and how they rate them.

So feel free to contribute and copy the following into the comments and fill it in and you can help do my research for me share hardware spec for the benefit of the RIA community .

Computer:
Processor:
RAM:
Hard Disk Size:
Hard Disk Speed:
Primary Software Used:
Rating: / 10
Other Comments:


Here’s mine for starters:

Computer: Macbook Pro 17″
Processor: 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 4Gb
Hard Disk Size: 150Gb
Hard Disk Speed: 5600rpm (i think)
Primary RIA development Software Used: Flex Builder, Visual Studio 2008 (under VMWare Fusion), Sql Server 2008
Rating: 7 / 10
Other Comments: The machine has been a real workhorse for the past 2 years and has taken quite a bit of torment from me. The hardware has been fairly robust although the problems are starting to present themselves now (now i’m out of warranty!) and things are very costly to put right. Runs very hot when running FlexBuilder in OSX and VS in windows and has really started to slow down lately. Never had much of a problem with system crashes or freezing other than the occasional browser fail.

Subclipse missing files / folders

So I was trying to get the latest files for a Flex project recently and I had an error about a missing stylesheet. I of course took the standard approach to fixing this and promptly bitched at the foolish developer who neglected to commit the crucial element… Alas turns out I was the fool and upon doing what I should have done in the first place and checking the logs and repository turns out the file was actually committed already.

So I check the file system, no dice. Do another update, nope. Try synchronizing with repository, nada. Try about 10 more updates on the off chance it will magically work one time, amazingly it doesn’t. WTF!?

Anyway turns out the solution is to do the following:

Right click project select “Update to version”

Choose HEAD, change Depth to “Fully recursive” and tick “Change working copy to specified depth”

Et voila, all files and folders get gotten again, no idea what causes this hiccup but this is much nicer than previous resolution of deleting entire project and checking out again

Flex/Flash Builder Icons for Eclipse – FB plugin version OS X

So I imagine very few people are bothered about this, but for anyone out there as precious as I am about things being ‘just right’ they might be interested in this.

I prefer to use the Plugin version of Flex/Flash Builder than the stand alone install, I’m not sure why it just feels better and seems more stable to me. Anyway, if you run multiple versions of Eclipse for whatever reason then it can be a bit confusing having all the same icons.

Having just done a clean install of my Mac to try and squeeze some more life out of it (whoever said Macs don’t need this was lying – it helps a LOT), I wanted to address this HUGE issue of all my eclipse based applications having the same icon.

For example, the first thing I did was to download and install Eclipse, make a copy of the Eclipse installation and then download and install Flex Builder 3 and the Flash Builder 4 Beta.

Now I want to use the proper FB3 and FB4 logos on these instances so I can tell them apart (you can see why this keeps me up at night I’m sure). So firstly you might notice the icons in the dock are alias’ (shortcuts) rather than direct references to the applciations, this was so I could rename them to be “Flex Builder 3″ and “Flash Builder 4″ as opposed to both being called “Eclipse”.

Next, command click on the alias and select “get info” and you’ll see the properties inspector for your alias pop up. Now navigate to your applications folder and do another ‘get info’ on the Flex/Flash builder plugin application (which should have the icon you’re after):

Now simply drag the large image at the bottom of the plugin get info panel into the little image at the top left of the alias get info panel et voila!

Custom named, pretty icons for plugin versions of Flex on Eclipse.

I’m sure to the hard-core Mac users this was obvious but to the new breed like myself I’d be interested if anyone else actually finds this at all useful?

AIR: URLRequest works on Windows but not on Mac

If you find that URLRequest works on Windows but not on Mac then simply prepend file:// to your url string. This will then work on both Windows and Mac.

var myFilePath:String = “someFile.xml”;
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(“file://” + myFilePath);

Calling secure (SSL) remote service from local Flex app running in Flexbuilder

If you have your remoting service running under SSL you might find when trying to use it from FlexBuilder you get an error along the lines of:

Channel.Security.Error error Error #2048:
Security sandbox violation: file://localhost/Users/Username/Flex/Projects/MyProject/bin-debug/MyProject.swf cannot load data from https://www.mywebsite.com/remoting/weborb.aspx. url: ‘https://www.mywebsite.com/remoting/weborb.aspx’”

Firstly make sure you have a cross domain file but I’m assuming you’ve already done that much, all you need to do is add the following to allow your locally running (non-secure) site to access the secure remote site by adding this:

1

<allow-access-from domain="localhost" to-ports="*" secure="false" />

How to show hidden files in finder

In Terminal type:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Then you’ll need to restart Finder by alt + right clicking the Finder logo and selecting relaunch. Obviously change to NO to disable again.

Adobe AIR MIME type for IIS

Another quick post for future reference, the IIS MIME type needed for Adobe AIR .air files:

extension: .air
mime-type: application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip