2 posts tagged “flex”

  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."
 

  I'll admit this post is half "for you" and half "for me" in that I want to have a quick way to find these settings later! ;)
  As our project has grown, I've found that the default amount of memory allotted for Eclipse just isn't sufficient.
  The solution is to find and edit the eclipse.ini file. It's in the directory where you've installed Eclipse.
  My file has these settings:
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
128m
-vmargs
-Xms512m
-Xmx1024m
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true

The bits you care about are the lines that start with -Xms and -Xmx.
-Xms is the minimum amount of memory set aside for Eclipse when it loads.
-Xmx is the maximum amount of memory Eclipse can use while running. It will grow dynamically if you exceed the original amount set by -Xms.

The line with "128m" on it is a complete mystery to me. If you want Eclipse to break, you're welcome to change it. When that joy has abated, set it back to 128m and enjoy!

Notes:

• If you know what that line does, reply to this post!
  
• My machine has 3g of RAM, so that max size is fine for me. If your machine has less memory, consider setting -Xms to 256 (or even 128) and -Xmx to 512.