I'm starting a new project in Flash Builder 4.6 and need some advices before going in one direction instead of the right one.
Basically, my application in Flash Builder is for mobile devices and tablets, so I need to know how could I create a chess board that fix exactly the width of any device. I do not know how could i do it exactly in Flex.
Could anyone give an idea or supply an example i could use?
Thanks.
Why not use a TileGroup/TileLayout with 100% height and width? You then set the rowHeight to be {this.height / ROWS} (ROWS being however many rows there are on a Chessboard) and doing the same for columnWidth. You could even use the horizontalGap and verticalGap properties to show through to a black background that could be used as separators between each box (though you would have to account for this in your rowHeight and columnWidth calculations, obviously)
I would populate the screen via AS3, as opposed to Flex. Something like this is what I have in mind.
var columnCount:int = 0;
var rowCount:int = 0;
var boxes:int = 64; //however many boxes on a chess board goes here
for ( var i:Number = 0; i < boxes; i+ ){
var rect:Rect = new Rect();
var color:SolidColor;
rect.percentHeight = 100;
rect.percentWidth = 100;
rect.name = i.toString(); //this will make it easier to keep track of which box is which later on
if ( rowCount % 2 == 1 ) {
if ( i % 2 == 1 ) color = 0x000000;
else color = 0xffffff;
}
else {
if ( i % 2 == 1 ) color = 0xffffff;
else color = 0x000000;
}
this.rect.fill = color;
this.tileGroup.addElement(rect);
if ( columnCount == 7 ) {
columnCount = 0;
rowCount++;
}
else {
columnCount++;
}
}
That is completely off the top of my head and untested, so I am sure there is an error or two, but you get the idea of how it would work.
EDIT: As an afterthought, you could probably do the colors 100% mathematically without using rowCount/columnCount vars, though it is probably much much easier to do so.
Related
I use the following code to set position of a DisplayObject to center.
obj.x = (screen_width - obj.width) / 2;
or
obj.x = (parentObj.width - obj.width) / 2;
And I use the following code to show 2 objects vertically.
obj2.x = obj1.width + interval
And I use the following code to show 2 objects vertically and set the position of them to center.
var obj3:Sprite = new Sprite;
obj3.addChild(obj1);
obj3.addChild(obj2);
obj2.x = obj1.width + interval;
obj3.x (screen_width - obj3.width) / 2;
Are the above codes a good way to manage positions of DisplayObjects?
Are there better and simple ways to do that?
Well you can also add them into a HGroup or a VGroup, (or HBox and VBox if you are using Flex 3). But when I want to implement a vertical layout without using these kind of elaborate objects, I usually create a "update()" method (note that the following code may contain syntax errors : it is just provided as an algorithm example):
private function update():void
{
// The vertical gap between elements
var gap:int = 4;
// The cumuled height
var cumuledHeight:Number = 0;
// The number of elements
var n:int = numElements;
// The element at each loop
var o:IVisualElement;
for (var i:int = 0; i<n; i++) {
// Gets the element
o = getElementAt(i);
// Sets its vertical position
o.y = cumuledHeight + gap*i;
// Updates the cumuled height
cumuledHeight += o.height;
}
}
Yes, there is a simpler way by using Flex to center it with horizontalCenter=0 and verticalCenter=0.
I want to dynamically add component in Container like Canvas(TileList constraints each child has the same size, GridList is poor in performance), for example
<mx:Canvas id="myHolder" width="600" height="550">
</mx:Canvas>
<mx:Button label="Add Button" click="addButton()"/>
when I click the button, I hope add a component(whatever the component is, and maybe each component has different size), and if the total width of all added child is greater than myHolder, I hope the new child can begin in new line, and stretch the height of myHolder at the same time.(layout with custom code is better)
On Canvas you have complete freedom to lay components anywhere using their x and y properties, so there's a lot of ways to skin this cat. Since you need rows, one of the methods may be (not tested):
//inside of your Canvas-based component
private function updateChildrenPositions():void
{
var rowY:Number = 0;
var rowWidth:Number = 0;
var rowHeight:Number = 0;
for (var i:int = 0, total:int = numChildren; i < total; i++)
{
var child:DisplayObject = getChildAt(i);
if (rowWidth + child.width > width)
{
//child will cause overflow, start next row
rowY += rowHeight;
rowWidth = 0;
rowHeight = 0;
}
rowWidth += child.width;
child.x = rowWidth;
child.y = rowY;
if (child.height > rowHeight) rowHeight = child.height; //accumulating max height
}
height = rowY + rowHeight;
}
This assumes Canvas has fixed width and set height depending on layout. You can add paddings and gaps later, it's a good exercise :)
To get the functionality you want, I wouldn't use an HBox. As alxx suggested, a TileList would be a better fit in this situation.
Here are some examples using a TileList to get you started:
http://blog.flexexamples.com/category/halo/tilelist/
http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/TileList
This is my attempt to write my own layout class for a panel of buttons (which may have between 2 and 20 buttons). Basically they should all be of a uniform size, with a constant spacing (5px) and resize appropriately.
However it doesn't always work.
Sometimes it works absolutely fine, but others it gives space for an extra column, or becomes unable to add additional columns on resizing (removing columns is fine), or something wont work. And it takes ages and seems horribly expensive in terms of computations. Reducing width seems significantly more painful in this respect for some reason.
Anyway, here it is:
package layouts
{
import mx.core.ILayoutElement;
import spark.components.supportClasses.GroupBase;
import spark.layouts.supportClasses.LayoutBase;
public class QButtonsLayout extends LayoutBase
{
public function QButtonsLayout()
{
super();
}
override public function measure():void
{
super.measure();
target.measuredHeight = 130;
}
override public function updateDisplayList(w:Number, h:Number):void
{
super.updateDisplayList(w,h);
var tCount:int = target.numElements; // Number of elements
var tW:Number = target.width; // Width of target (button area) - somewhere between 550 and 1000px
var maxW:Number = 1; // Largest natural width of any given element
var maxH:Number = 1; // Largest natural height of any given element
var eSetW:Number = 1; // Set (to be) width of each element upon the target
var eSetH:Number = 1; // Set (to be) height of each element upon the target
var tCols:Number = 1; // Number of columns upon the target
var tRows:Number = 1; // Number of rows upon the target
for (var i:int = 0; i<tCount; i++) // Find maxW
{
var layoutElement:ILayoutElement = useVirtualLayout ? target.getVirtualElementAt(i):target.getElementAt(i);
var thisW:Number = layoutElement.getPreferredBoundsWidth();
var thisH:Number = layoutElement.getPreferredBoundsHeight();
if(thisW > maxW)
{
maxW = thisW;
};
if(thisH > maxH)
{
maxH = thisH;
};
}
tCols = Math.floor((tW-5)/(maxW+5)); //Find maximum number of columns one can fit onto the target
if(tCols>tCount) //Fix to deal with cases with low tCounts
{
tCols = tCount;
};
tRows = Math.ceil(tCount/tCols); //Find corresponding number of rows
eSetW = ((tW-5)/tCols)-5; //Set widths of elements based upon number of columns, 5s to add some space between elements
eSetH = maxH; //Takes height as the largest height
for (var j:int = 0; j<tCount; j++)
{
var layoutElement2:ILayoutElement = useVirtualLayout ? target.getVirtualElementAt(j):target.getElementAt(j);
var eRow:int = Math.floor(j/tRows); //Row of given element, taking the 1st to be zero
var eCol:int = j - eRow*tRows; // Column of given element, again taking the 1st column as zero
var _x:Number = 5 + eRow*(eSetW+5);
var _y:Number = 5 + eCol*(eSetH+5);
layoutElement2.setLayoutBoundsPosition(_x,_y);
layoutElement2.setLayoutBoundsSize(eSetW,eSetH);
}
}
}
}
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Criticism more than welcome.
Turns out that it's not. The layout class itself is fine, as far as calculating element positions and size is concerned.
It is actually a problem in the way in which the buttons used calculated their prefered widths. Whilst I'm not versed in the actual manner in which this happens, it was solved by removing %width values for any height and width values for graphic elements within the button skins. (Eg changing width="100%" to left="0" right="0").
I hope this might help someone, somewhere, sometime.
Fullscreen mode and I have been battling for a while in this Flex application, and I'm coming up short on Google results to end my woes. I have no problem going into fullscreen mode by doing a Application.application.stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;, but the rest of the content just sits there in the top, left corner at it's original size.
All right, says I, I'll just do a stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.SHOW_ALL and make it figure out how to pull this off. And it looks like it does. Except that when you mouse over the individual checkboxes and buttons and various components, they all fidget slightly. Just a slight jump up or down as they resize...on mouse over. Well, this is frustrating, but bearable. I can always just invoke invalidateSize() explicitly for all of them.
But for the comboboxes. The ones at the bottom have their menus go off the bottom of the screen, and when I pop out of fullscreen mode, their drop downs cut off half way. I have no idea how to fix that. Can someone step in here, and put me out of my misery?
What is the right way to scale a Flex application up to fullscreen?
var button:Button = button_fullscreen;
try {
if(stage.displayState == StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN) {
Application.application.stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.NORMAL;
button.label = "View Fullscreen Mode";
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
} else {
Application.application.stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;
button.label = "Exit Fullscreen Mode";
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.SHOW_ALL;
}
invalidateSizes(); // Calls invalidateSize() explicitly on several components.
} catch(error:SecurityError) {
Alert.show("The security settings of your computer prevent this from being displayed in fullscreen.","Error: "+error.name+" #"+error.errorID);
} catch(error:Error) {
Alert.show(error.message,error.name+" #"+error.errorID);
}
Sometimes things go wrong with flex :)
try the following approach
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
then on resize or added to stage set the scaling manually
private function updateScaling():void
{
if(stage.stageWidth != width || stage.stageHeight != height)
{
var scaling:Number = 1;
if(width>height)
{
scaling = stage.stageWidth / width;
}
else
{
scaling = stage.stageHeight / height;
}
scaleX = scaleY = scaling;
}
}
I've been playing around with different methods of determining at runtime the width of a "label" so that I can resize the "label" because I don't want it to truncate. I've finally found an easy solution through UITextField which allows me to set the .autoSize which is great! However, now I'm trying to "style" (simply adjust font and font size) of the UITextField but it seems that I have to do it manually with '.htmlText' (which I'll gladly accept if that is the ONLY way).
I'm using the .text to set the value of the label.
My test case involves a HBox (I'm actually using a Grid but they should be the same and I've done testing on both):
I style the HBox and the style carries through to the UITextField. I don't believe this will work for me because I have other components inside that I need to style differently.
I've tried: UITextFormat and TextFormat (I see that the .htmlText being updated accordingly but the output doesn't update. Then I noticed that whenever I called hbox.addChild(myUITextField) it would override the .htmlText
I've tried setting the style with myUITextField.setStyle("fontSize", 20) before and/or after the call to addChild neither of which made an impact on the display as per what I noted above.
Changes are being made but they seem to be overrided when I add it to the display.
So what do I need to do in order to style the UITextField aside from manually setting it along with my contents in .htmlText? Solutions not using UITextField is fine as long as there is some easy way of not truncating the text.
EDIT: I want to just do textField.setStyle('fontSize', 20) and expect that every time I change the text, I wouldn't need to use HTML to go with it (so I can just do textField.text = 'something else' and expect that it will still have a font size of 20). This is what I meant by not using .htmlText (sorry if I wasn't clear before).
2nd EDIT: I guess I should present the whole issue and maybe that'll clarify what I did wrong or couldn't achieve.
My intent is to have a Grid and add text into it. I do not want it to wrap or scroll so I add it to the next row in the Grid when the current row's children total width exceeds some number. In order to add it to the next row, I need to be able to calculate the width of the text. I would like to be able to style that text individually based on cases and there might be other components (like a TextInput). Essentially what I'm trying to accomplish is "Fill in the Blank".
I've included code to show what I'm currently doing and it works somewhat. It might be un-related to the original issue of styling but I can't figure out how to adjust the distance between each UITextField but aside from that this fits what I would like to accomplish. Relevant to the question is: I would like to change the way I style each UITextField (currently setting .htmlText) into something a bit straightforward though like I previously mentioned I'll gladly accept using .htmlText if that's the only solution.
So I have a Grid with x Rows in it and in each row, I have exactly one GridItem. Based on the input, I add UITextField and TextInput into the GridItem going on to the next GridItem when necessary. If you have a better way of doing so then that would be better but I guess what I really want is to find a different way of styling.
Also another problem, I'm not sure of the exact way to add a TextField into the display. I tried:
var t : TextField = new TextField();
t.text = "I'm a TextField";
hBox.addChild(t); // doesn't work
//this.addChild(t); // doesn't work either
But I get the following error:
TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.text::TextField#172c8f9 to mx.core.IUIComponent.
Here's what I have that's working.
private function styleQuestionString(str : String) : String {
return '<FONT leading="1" face="verdana" size="20">' + str + '</FONT>';
}
private function loadQuestion(str : String) : void {
/* Split the string */
var tmp : Array = str.split("_");
/* Track the current width of the GridItem */
var curWidth : int = 0;
/* Display components that we will add */
var txtField : UITextField = null;
var txtInput : TextInput = null;
/* Track the current GridItem */
var curGridItem : GridItem = null;
/* Track the GridItem we can use */
var gridItemAC : ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
var i : int = 0;
/* Grab the first GridItem from each GridRow of Grid */
var tmpChildArray : Array = questionGrid.getChildren();
for (i = 0; i < tmpChildArray.length; i++) {
gridItemAC.addItem((tmpChildArray[i] as GridRow).getChildAt(0));
}
curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);
/* Used to set the tab index of the TextInput */
var txtInputCounter : int = 1;
var txtFieldFormat : UITextFormat = new UITextFormat(this.systemManager);
txtFieldFormat.leading = "1";
//var txtFieldFormat : TextFormat = new TextFormat();
//txtFieldFormat.size = 20;
/* Proper Order
txtField = new UITextField();
txtField.text = tmp[curItem];
txtField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat);
*/
var txtLineMetrics : TextLineMetrics = null;
var tmpArray : Array = null;
curGridItem.setStyle("leading", "1");
var displayObj : DisplayObject = null;
for (var curItem : int= 0; curItem < tmp.length; curItem++) {
/* Using UITextField because it can be auto-sized! */
/** CORRECT BLOCK (ver 1)
txtField = new UITextField();
txtField.text = tmp[curItem];
txtField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat);
***/
tmpArray = (tmp[curItem] as String).split(" ");
for (i = 0; i < tmpArray.length; i++) {
if (tmpArray[i] as String != "") {
txtField = new UITextField();
txtField.htmlText = styleQuestionString(tmpArray[i] as String);
//txtField.setTextFormat(txtFieldFormat); // No impact on output
txtLineMetrics = curGridItem.measureHTMLText(txtField.htmlText);
curWidth += txtLineMetrics.width + 2;
if (curWidth >= 670) {
curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
curGridItem.setStyle("leading", "1");
if (gridItemAC.length != 1) {
gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);
}
// TODO Configure the proper gap distance
curWidth = txtLineMetrics.width + 2;
}
displayObj = curGridItem.addChild(txtField);
}
}
//txtField.setColor(0xFF0000); // WORKS
if (curItem != tmp.length - 1) {
txtInput = new TextInput();
txtInput.tabIndex = txtInputCounter;
txtInput.setStyle("fontSize", 12);
txtInputCounter++;
txtInput.setStyle("textAlign", "center");
txtInput.width = TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH;
curWidth += TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH;
if (curWidth >= 670) {
curGridItem = gridItemAC[0];
if (gridItemAC.length != 1) {
gridItemAC.removeItemAt(0);
}
// TODO Decide if we need to add a buffer
curWidth = TEXT_INPUT_WIDTH + 2;
}
curGridItem.addChild(txtInput);
txtInputAC.addItem(txtInput);
/* Adds event listener so that we can perform dragging into the TextInput */
txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_ENTER, dragEnterHandler);
txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_DROP, dragDropHandler);
txtInput.addEventListener(DragEvent.DRAG_EXIT, dragExitHandler);
}
/* Add event so that this label can be dragged */
//txtField.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, dragThisLabel(event, txtField.text));
}
}
After about 8 hours of searching for a solution to what would seem to be such a simple issue I FINALLY stumbled on your posts here... Thankyou!!!
I have been stumbling around trying to get TextField to work and had no Joy, Label was fine, but limited formatting, and I need to be able to use embedded fonts and rotate. After reading the above this finally worked for me:
var myFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
myFormat.align = "center";
myFormat.font = "myFont";
myFormat.size = 14;
myFormat.color = 0xFFFFFF;
var newTxt:UITextField = new UITextField();
newTxt.text = "HELLO";
addChild(newTxt);
newTxt.validateNow();
newTxt.setTextFormat(myFormat);
The order of addChild before the final 2 steps was critical! (myFont is an embedded font I am using).
One again... a thousand thankyou's...
John
EDIT BASED ON THE ASKERS FEEDBACK:
I didn't realize you wanted to just apply one style to the whole textfield, I thought you wanted to style individual parts. This is even simpler for you, won't give you any trouble at all :)
var textFormat: TextFormat = new TextFormat("Arial", 12, 0xFF0000);
myText.setTextFormat(textFormat);
Be aware that this sets the style to the text that is in the TextField, not necessarily future text you put in. So have your text in the field before you call setTextFormat, and set it again every time you change it just to be sure it stays.
It's probably best if you use a normal TextField as opposed to the component. If you still want the component you may need to call textArea.validateNow() to get it to update with the new style (not 100% sure on that one though) Adobe components are notoriously bad, and should be avoided. :(
To see all available options on the TextFormat object see here
END EDIT ---------
This is easy enough to just do with CSS in a normal old TextField.
var myCSS: String = "Have some CSS here, probably from a loaded file";
var myHTML: String = "Have your HTML text here, and have it use the CSS styles";
// assuming your textfield's name is myText
var styleSheet: StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();
styleSheet.parseCSS(myCSS);
myText.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
myText.styleSheet = styleSheet;
myText.htmlText = myHTML;
Supported HTML tags can be found here
Supported CSS can be found here
The reason you have a problem adding Textfield to containers is that it doesn't implement the IUIComponent interface. You need to use UITextField if you want to add it. However, that's presenting me with my own styling issues that brought me to this question.
A few things I know:
TextField is styled using the TextFormat definition, and applying it to the textfield. As Bryan said, order matters.
setStyle does nothing on IUITextField, and the TextFormat method doesn't seem to work the same as in normal TextFields. (Edit #2: Ahah. You need to override the "validateNow" function on UITextFields to use the setTextFormat function)
To autosize a TextArea, you need to do something like this (inheriting from TextArea):
import mx.core.mx_internal;
use namespace mx_internal;
...
super.mx_internal::getTextField().autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
this.height = super.mx_internal::getTextField().height;
Found this code on, I think, on StackOverflow a while back. Apologies to the original author. But the idea is that you need to access the "mx_internal" raw textfield.
Text and TextArea have wrapping options. (Label does not). So if you set the explicit width of a Text object, you might be able to size using the measuredHeight option and avoid truncation.
(edit: That was #4, but stackoverflow parsed it into a 1...)