BrideL.OrG

Another late night…..

I haven’t had any time to refactor the code in this component since I put it together for the Australian Flex Derby contest.
Lots of people have asked for the source code to get them started with their own spell check components, so here it is..

Looking at the code after so long makes me cringe - But I can safely say that I have come a long way since this first try at Flex/AS3

FlexSpellCheck Component source code.
Some documentation can be found in the original post download here

Adobe Video Workshop is a DVD included with all the CS3 products. The online version, which contains over 200 videos, can be viewed FREE on the Adobe site.

Everyone has a personal preference when learning new things, and I always seem to learn quicker when viewing video tutorials.

This is a great resource. Thank you Adobe and Lynda.com

Thanks to:
Robert M. Hall

Whoo Hoo!
Go get it. Looks like a late night for many tonight:-)

Now, where did I put that Central/Flex Australian Weather source code?

The “Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide” is now available for download from Adobe Labs.

When will we see the Alpha release?

Someone on the FlexAussie list asked if it was possible to hide sub-controls on the RichTextEditor. They wanted to hide the font color, size and font-family controls. Below is a subclass of the RichTextEditor to allow you to do just that.

Example
View Source

Bjorn Schultheiss from QDC Technologies has started a new flex mailing list for us Aussies!

Bjorn says “This not an effort to move Australian developers away from using FlexCoders,
rather it may be useful for Aussie developers to post messages that may not
be suitable for the international list. “http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexaussie/
Post message:   flexaussie@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe:      flexaussie-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Looks as though the Australian 2006 Adobe and Builder AU Flex Developer Derby has been extended to the 15th September.

Maybe they didn’t get enough entries? Did you submit yours?

Everyone needs a spell checker — right?

Well here it is. A Flex 2 spellchecker component using the (unofficial) google spell checker service API.

Flex 2 Features used in the component
The Flex SpellCheckComponent extends the mx.controls.PopUpButton control. You can use it with a TextInput, TextArea or RichTextEditor control.

The component can be instantiated with MXML or Actionscript, and will use the Google service URL directly if a proxy url is not defined in urlString. (The default Google url will only work from within Flex Builder).

It uses a Menu control as the button popup, which is used to select the language that the spellcheck should use.

When you click on an incorrectly spelt word, it uses a List control to display the list of possible corrections returned from the Google spellcheck service.

A custom skin is used for the information tab that attaches itself to the text area being tested, and the Fade effect to fade the information tab into view.

Public variables use the Inspectable Metadata tag, which expose them as attribute hints in the hints and tag inspector area of Flex Builder.

The component implements the powerful XML-handling standards defined in ECMAScript for XML (E4X) specification. This is used to Search, add and delete nodes and attributes directly on the returned XML string from the Google service.

You can download the component from here. The zip file contains a SWC, documentation and a sample file. I am going to enter this in the Adobe and Builder AU Flex Developer Derby Contest, but I will probably release the component once the contest is finished. I don’t expect to win anything with this cause it’s not “sexy” enough for a Flex entry. It does however use LOTS of Flex features, and was very quick to develop — I just love this Flex stuff!

Let me know of any problems or issues you find so I can make it useful for the community.

View the Flex Spell Checker Demo
Download the Flex Spell Checker Component

I tried for a couple of hours to subclass Button with Flex 2 Beta 3 using both MXML and Actionscript. I tried instantiating the component with MXML and also actionscript. Each time the button would appear without any skins. The label of the button would appear and the events would work, but no skins!

In the end I gave up and uninstalled Flex Beta 3 and installed the final release of Flex. Everything is working now — WTF!

I now have 30 days to complete my project