Babbling about Software

  I'm a new fan of GoDaddy. It's very clear that they put a lot of time into their management tools. The side effect of that is that some of their online help information is outdated. It's hard to follow step-by-step instructions when the UI has changed radically. All told it's not that hard to figure out, but it can be vexing.
  To that end I thought I'd share what I figured out through experimentation.
  GoDaddy's help will tell you that you need to edit A-Records yourself if you're going to host multiple domains. Don't bother trying to do it, you won't find the UI. Your main domain will be hosted in your root folder. Extra domains can either also be pointed at the root folder (that's the default) or can be based in a folder of your choosing (under the root folder).
  I couldn't find FTP instructions for Dreamweaver, so I followed the simplest set of instructions. It was a little hard to figure out what the main settings were, so I'll break it down.

My main site's FTP info:

• Remote/Testing Server Info:
  
• FTP host: ftp.mainsite.com
• Host directory: (blank...no text...don't put stuff here!)
• Login/Password: the info set while configuring the main domain during 'setup'

The following settings work for sites whose DNS is managed by SozoDomains.com and DomainMonger.com:
SecondSite's FTP info:

• Remote/Testing Server Info:
  
• FTP host: ftp.mainsite.com
• Host directory: secondsiteRootFolder
  
• Login/Password: the info set while configuring the main domain during 'setup'

  There's yet another configuration that works only for SozoDomains, but that does not work for DomainMonger. I'm going to save everyone the headache and not post that info here.

  I registered 2 new domain names. One is a '.com', the other a '.name'. I set up DNS service for them through a company that provides me with DNS service for a different pre-existing domain.
  I have web hosting through Globat.com. Once I figured out the confusing menu contortions required to set up hosting for the new domains, I set up hosting (on my TeraByte Xtreme (tm) package) for my 2 new domains. The '.com' worked. The '.name' didn't.
  I waited 48 hours to see if the '.name' just took longer (which is realistic). No luck. I filed a trouble ticket on it with Globat. I figured it was a DNS issue. I got an email back telling me that it was, that they were fixing it, and that it would be up in 48 hours. It has been 8 days now and it still isn't fixed.
  I inquired about it again today. No response. I would have been satisfied to wait if I'd seen an email saying "We are investigating further. We'll get back to you when we figured it out."
  I tried to use their 'instant customer service' chat tool. It showed me that I had an approximate wait time of 3 minutes and 50-something seconds...for about half an hour. That's a conservative estimate.
  While I waited I had time to:

• Get a quick list of other hosting providers
• See what other people were saying about those providers on forums
• Investigate hosting package pricing on the candidate I thought looked best (GoDaddy)
• Fully investigate each feature offered, including how many domains I could host on that account, and how many bytes I would be allowed to traffic monthly
• Register for an account
• Pay for an account
• Fully configure my first domain, including login names, nameserver information, etc.
  

  I drove home from work, logged back in to the GoDaddy management tool. It's confusing, but less so than Globat's.
  GoDaddy's interface is pretty good once you learn that there are a couple different interfaces available, and that there's little overlap in functionality between them. Knowing that allows you to set up a couple tabs in Firefox, each with a different interface, and pop around between them to do what you're trying to do.

Busy week. Preparing for Flex Bug Quash. It's put on by a couple of the Flex User's Group guys. Nate and Marty.

It's a big week. Preparing for:
<p style="visibility:visible" height="89"><embed src="http://bugquash.com/includes/flash/countdown/countdown_v1.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" scale="noscale" salign="l" height="170" width="300" name="countdown" align="middle" wmode="transparent"></embed><br /><a href="http://www.bugquash.com/promos/" target="_blank">Want this for your site?</a></p>

It's put together by a couple of the Seattle Flex User's Group guys.

And because I'm a logo fiend:
<a href="http://bugquash.com?rel=seattlePromo09" target="_blank"><img src="http://bugquash.com/promos/seattle09.jpg" border="0" alt="BugQuash, release your inner Ninja!" width="230" height="230" /></a>

  Go here: http://www.richinternet.de/blog/index.cfm?entry=911D4B57-0F0D-5A73-AF6F4D4D04099757, download the plugin. Unzip it to its own directory. You'll see a plugin folder and a .jar in that folder. Copy that .jar into the 'plugins' directory within your Eclipse directory (or directories if you have multiple versions of eclipse).
  Close Eclipse. Open Eclipse. Go to Windows->Show View->Other->General->Tasks. This puts an item in your 'tasks' panel whenever you type "//TODO: ..." or "//FIXME: ..." in your ActionScript/MXML files. Pretty slick. It also adds a 'checklist' icon to the left border of the line of code where you've written the "TODO" comment.

  I'm trying to avoid blogging in the 'echo chamber', but in case anyone's reading, this Flex app: http://www.universalmind.com/#/capabilities/demos/spatialkey-crime ("SpatialKey") looks pretty awesome!
  It's a law enforcement application, but the features the app provides really got my wheels turning. A couple of the high points of their map-based stuff:

• Playback of patrol cars' routes:  Patrol car data can be played back over user-selected periods of time.
  
• "Heat map": Red colors appear where there are higher crime rates.
  

  The link above has about 4 minutes of video with voice-over. Check it out!

  Let's say I want to have a text input that only accepts a-z, A-Z and 0-9. I can set this up in MXML as shown:
<mx:TextInput id="myText" restrict="a-zA-z0-9" />
 
  I needed to bar users from entering special characters, but for some reason the characters '^', '[' and ']' were still being allowed. Odd, since the behavior of the 'restrict' setting should have caught this. I was pretty sure this has to do with the fact that '^' is used in 'restrict' to mean 'and none of the following', and the square brackets are used to character sets.
  Sure enough. Here's the fix:
<mx:TextInput id="myText" restrict="a-zA-z0-9^\^\[\]" />

  That setting says "allow a-z, A-Z and 0-9" the first caret ('^') says "and none of the following: ", after which the caret is entered (with an escape sequence), followed by square brackets.

What we're doing:
  You've started learning Flex. You have some books. Perhaps you've finished the core 'starter' documents Adobe provides (see my previous post). And maybe you'd like to:

• Dig deeper into Flex
• Get tips on where to go to learn more
• See what other groups are doing
• See some third-party libraries in action
• See where the Flex technology is going
  

  Alas, you missed the most recent 360 | Flex Conference. Where do you go?

  I'm going to give you some links and places to start.

Your Steps:
  Install Adobe Media Player. You're going to use it to view videos from the San Jose 360 | Flex Conference. Then we'll walk through how you can find more content from Adobe.

  Get the content from the 360 | Flex Conference.

1. Open Adobe Media Player ('AMP')
2. Click "My Favorites"
3. Click "Add RSS Feed"
4. Enter/Cut-n-Paste: http://sessions.onflex.org/1733261879.xml

Quick AMP Familiarization:
  Eventually you'll want to set AMP up to work for your use of it. For now, try these settings:

• Choose 'Options' from the upper right
• In the "Start Screen" tab select "My Favorites"
• In the "New Episodes" tab choose the "Display..." radio button and select '6' in the number drop-down
  
• In "Playback" tab choose "100%" and check "Remember where I left off..."
• In the "Performance" tab choose the number '6' so AMP will pre-fetch some videos for you. Also choose a bit rate for the videos (based on how awesome your machine is)
  

 
More about AMP: How to permanently store videos you want to watch multiple times
  AMP will keep a maximum of 6 videos for you. If you've watched them and want to see them again later, you'll find you have to download them again. Here's how to beat that.

• Go to the 360 | Flex Conference link from above. 
• Download the FLV files you want to see. (Their names are mangled. Rename them as you see fit to allow you to remember what they're about.)
  
• Open up AMP
• Press Control-"O" to "Open" a file.
  
• Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the FLVs, choose the one you want to watch.
  

Finding other video content:

• Choose AMP's 'Catalog' link. Browse it.
• Click in AMP's 'Search' box. Look at search results for "flex", "flash", and especially "adobe" and "adobe developer"
• Any FLV can be opened and played, so poke around the internets!
  

  I've always found it best to start at the beginning. A number of books cover 'how to use Flex components,' but it's frequently unhelpful when you begin trying to toss around events or encounter a data binding issue. It becomes much easier to program in Flex once you understand the framework's underlying mechanisms.
  I like books because I can highlight them, write notes in the margins and dog-ear important pages. It's difficult to do that on a web page...and it can be painful to print out large PDF files.
  Adobe has documented much of the Flex magic, but it can be hard to know what you're looking for. Let me first give you the link to the Adobe Flex resources, and then let me tell you where to start.

  If you're brand new, start with the "Installation Instructions" at the top of the page.
  If you'd like to see the big picture before you dive into the code, read "Building and Deploying Flex Applications." You're going to use most of this information sooner or later. I'll admit to having skimmed this a bit, with the intention of coming back to it when I care more about deeper parts of the development process.
  Now we get to what I believe is the core place to start. To understand the fundamentals of the Flex framework (including answering the question 'what is the Flex framework?'), read the "Flex 3 Developer's Guide."
  Once you're familiar with the framework and can use the controls, you'll want to learn how to create Custom Components. This allows you to make highly specialized controls that extend the behavior of the existing Flex controls...as well as allowing you to make entirely new controls whose lifecycle can be managed for you by the Flex framework. That document is called "Creating and Extending Flex Components." It's substantially smaller than the Developer's Guide.

  I've actually printed out the PDFs so that I could interact with them. One is 250-ish pages. The other is 1,400-ish pages. Suffice it to say the big one required many binder clips and is hard to manage comfortably. I checked bookstores, both brick-n-mortar and online, but to no avail. Neither of those are available for purchase...or are they?

  At the very bottom of the Adobe Flex resources page there's a subtle grey box whose very last paragraph indicates you can get 'Published hard copy documentation' for some things. It turns out that all these resources can be purchased in a $50 bundle. Here's how to get to it:

  Click the link at the bottom of that grey box on the Adobe Flex resources page to go the Adobe Store. You need an account. Once you've created one, go back to that page and use the "Show Me" combo/drop-down box to select "Flex Books." You want to order the "Adobe Flex 3 Documentation Set."