In the old days of Java, one often complained about the lack of an assert statement. Once, I even wrote an Assert class that threw a runtime exception (based on a debug flag), but I didn’t end up using it all that much due to performance constraints. Eventually Java did get a native assert statement. Now we’re finding ourselves in a similar situation with ActionScript 3. My program has grown complex enough that I need to sprinkle it with assertions in certain portions.

There are 3 ways to specify the default styling (CSS) for your own custom-built UI components in Flex. Let's take the example of a component called TagBar that I'm building. The component is very similar to the LinkBar component of the Flex library: it displays a list of "tags" (like a tag cloud) that the user can click through for more information. The default look of the component is as shown in the image below: The component itself is simply a subclass of the LinkBar component.

What's the point in buying a Mac if you're not going to copy some of its cool features? In my spare time, I've been working on an implementation of Expose-like window navigation in Flex 2. It's nowhere near complete, but I got so desperate to write about it that I've uploaded a quick demo here (SWF). Demo: fTube with Flexpose (SWF) My implementation is called Flexpose. To see it in action: Open a few videos by double-clicking on items in the data grid. Make sure some of the windows are overlapping.

You have a main application and two sub-applications loaded dynamically using the SWFLoader component. <Application xmlns="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"> <Label text="Main" /> <HBox> <SWFLoader source="sub1.swf" /> <SWFLoader source="sub2.swf" /> </HBox> </Application> The sub-applications have one List object each, with drag 'n drop enabled.