Sometimes it is necessary to create custom preview of the component in the Flex Builder “Design” view.
It is undocumented feature
I’ve found very interesting class in the Flex SDK 3: mx.core.UIComponentGlobals.

This class contains static field designMode:Boolean.

Just check that field in your component code.
You can download example component with the source code from here:
http://anychart.com/tips_and_tricks/designMode/DesignModeComponent.zip

Also you can download the usage sample:
http://anychart.com/tips_and_tricks/designMode/DesignModeComponentSample.zip

Running in the Flex Builder “Design” mode it shows AnyChart image. But when it runs in the flash player it shows only gray rectangle.

We have found a nice bug in mxmlc compiller

var a:Number = 10;
var b:Number = 20;
var c:Number = a - - b;
trace (c);

It’s correct! Result is 30. But mxmlc ant task doesn’t compile this code sometimes…

It’s very surprising bug.

Interesting in URLLoader and URLRequest.

If you are trying to load file using relative URL, that contains colon (”:”) and dot(”.”) in param values, you receive security error:

e.g.:
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("/test.flash?p=smth::else");
or
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("./test.flash?p=smth::else");

are not valid URL’s for Flash Player because flash player doesn’t escape “:” in urls.

You should use absolute URL’s for it:

e.g.:

var request:URLRequest = new
URLRequest("http://localhost:8080/test.flash?p=smth::else");

As I promised I’ve uploaded source code for solving the problem with flash content printing in Firefox and an example of its usage in Flash.

FFPrintFix library was extended and now it is called ACPrintManager. Now it is not only bug fix for printing, but also content control for printing from a browser.

See all details here:
http://www.anychart.com/blog/projects/acprintmanager/

I will let out a secret: we have solved a problem with printing Flash/Flex applications in Firefox

Here is the article how you can use it.

UPD1: http://www.anychart.com/blog/2007/10/27/ac-print-manager/
UPD2: http://www.anychart.com/blog/projects/acprintmanager/
UPD3: LGPL license

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