What is the best way to do a loader in a flex application? I have an animated .gif that is to be used as our loader (whenever I need to wait for an action to complete), and I am not sure the best way to do it.
This is how I am thinking:
Have the loader be a custom component.
On the parent application, add an event listener for my custom event AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER.
In the event listener, use the PopUpManager to show the loader.
Listen for AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER.
Get rid fo the loader via PopUpManager.
What do you think about this? Is there a better way to do it?
Thanks!
Andrew
Well, last I checked, animated gifs don't work in Flex unless you have a workaround. Still, I wouldn't use an animated gif to create an animation because of their low quality. I would just recreate it using Flash.
The way I would do the loader however would be very different. personally, I don't believe in 'system loaders' unless it's your application's preloader. The reason for this is that there could be more than one thing loading at the same time (which might not know about each other) which means that the loader popup could disappear before everything is loaded (first one loads, dispatches event and removes popup, while the other is still loading).
What I like to do is create a custom component for the popup loader (since it will be reused quite a bit) and from there I can either use states the are appropriate for my view or have a boolean flag binded to show the popup when true (this can easily be done using frameworks like Parsley). The popup would only cover the part of the system that's actually loading data (since I doubt that your whole app is loading data at the same time) which makes for a better UX.
I ended up using as3gif (until I can get this recreated as a .swf). The way I do this is by using my custom event class (AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER and AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER), which bubbles up to the top. I then use the PopUpManager to add/remove this with modal to disable the application.
Related
I'm looking for the most concise way to deal with focus in an application which renders a map in a canvas component. You can pan the map location using arrow keys or ASWD keys. So far, I've been giving the canvas focus at startup and handling key pressed events via canvas.setOnKeyPressed().
This works fine, but I've always known that a problem was on the horizon when other components enter the picture. Once you interact with another component, it gains focus, and you're unable to scroll around the canvas map. I can prevent this from happening with some components like Hyperlinks or Buttons (I don't need tab-navigation) with something like this for those components:
sidePanel.getChildren().forEach(node -> node.setFocusTraversable(false));
But, when we get to things like TextArea or TextField, those do need to hold focus while they're being edited. And I'll need some way to return focus back (or at least unfocus those components) without being an annoyance to the user. (I don't want to have to click the canvas for it to regain focus.)
The options I see for returning focus back to the canvas after the user is done with those fields seem to be:
Add a key handler (ex. ESC or ENTER keypress) on EACH of these components which returns focus back to the canvas.
Maybe not so concise, and a bit of a pain... also feels a bit fragile; if I miss something and the canvas loses focus, it would fail - I need a 100% reliable solution.
Extend each of these components and add similar code to return focus back to Canvas
Even nastier and requires using custom components in Scene Builder, which
is not ideal.
Add a global event handler on the Scene and transmit events to the controller which owns the canvas
I believe an event filter would accomplish this - but on the other hand if the user is simply using arrow keys to move around a TextArea, I wouldn't want the Canvas map to move!
To solve the above problem, possibly the global event handler could ignore ASWD and arrow keypresses if the focus is on certain types of components? Is this worth trying, or am I neglecting a problem this would create?
Are there any other simple options out there that I've missed - and what would you suggest as the best option here? I'd like an automatic solution that doesn't require remembering to add some workaround code every time a UI component is added.
Greetings! I have a Flex 4.5 Mobile project rolling, and I've hit a pretty crazy snag. I'm using a StageWebView object to render web pages, embedded within the rest of my spark layouts. I'm trying to add a gesture event to the component that contains the StageWebView, but since the StageWebView object doesn't belong to the Flex stack (it inherits from EventDispatcher, not UIComponent) all of my events seem to be getting eaten. Any mouse based event (click, gesture, etc) doesn't seem to register, and I'm not sure how to get around it. The gesture events work if I use the area where the browser is not rendered. How can I get the gesture event from the outer SkinnableContainer?
StageWebView Reference:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/media/StageWebView.html
UIComponent Wrapped StageWebView:
http://soenkerohde.com/2010/11/air-mobile-stagewebview-uicomponent/
Thanks!
I guess you might have to wire up the gesture events yourself, just doing a quick digging in UIComponent.as, it has these:
[Event(name="touchInteractionStarting", type="mx.events.TouchInteractionEvent")]
[Event(name="touchInteractionStart", type="mx.events.TouchInteractionEvent")]
[Event(name="touchInteractionEnd", type="mx.events.TouchInteractionEvent")]
it's not a bug, from what i understand any mouse interaction over a stagewebview means an interaction with the html currently loaded in itself. you should capture events there and trigger it back to the swf.
surely there are some jquery plugins or something that have gestures to help achieving that.
it's a bit of a bummer that you cant overlay stuff over them though.
I'm moving to a pure as3 environment into flex and I have a question about preloaders.
For one of my apps in particular when the swf loaded I would add a screen with an animated preloader. Then at a particular point in my code when I know all of my xml has been parsed, UI built and all initiliztion done I dispatch a "done" event which removes the preloader.
How can I achieve this is flex? I've only ever really seen flex preloaders that are percentage based which I believe represent the actual loading of the swf itself?
Please read the flex cookbook for preloaders, they have some demo applications, that could help u out
actually there is a preloader property in the application tag,
that could be wht u might help u out
tc
Ankur Sharma
Flex has a ProgressBar control that you can use for similar purposes. If you want to continue to use your own custom animated progress bar, you can add that Sprite to the rawChildren of a Container (preferably Canvas) and show it as a modal pop-up using the PopUpManager - remove the pop-up from the done event's handler.
The overriden addChild method of the Container class will throw an error if you pass a child that doesn't extend UIComponent - that's why you should use rawChildren.addChild.
Yep default flex preloader represents the loading of the swf itself.
If I were you, I would use the Task library from the Cairngorm 3 Libs, works perfectly with a preloader :
http://opensource.adobe.com/svn/opensource/cairngorm3/trunk/libraries/TaskTest/src/samples/TaskFlowPreloader.as
When I try to access the hidden TABs of my tab navigator control in action script, it returns a null error. But it works OK if I just activate the control in the user interface once. Obviously the control is not created until I use it. How do I make all the tabs automatically created by default ?
<mx:TabNavigator creationPolicy="all"/>
That should do it. Deferred instanciation is a feature, but sometimes it is a hassle.
The Flex framework is optimizing creation be default (creationPolicy="auto") so if you have a configuration dialog with a lot of tabs, for example, and the most useful tab is the first one, your application does not spend time and memory initializing the tabs that the user never sees.
This makes a lot of difference when dialogs like this never release, and is a good default to go with.
One thing to look at is using a private variable in your dialog/form instead of pushing the data to the control on the hidden page. This style treats the whole form as if it were a component, which it sort of is. To repeat: the MXML form/dialog/canvas is a class, and it can have data and methods in addition to containing other components.
Cheers
On a side note, I've run into the deferred-loading policy in a multi-state application, and circumvented it by forcing all elements to be included and invisible in the initial state. Something to consider, but only as a hack.
What is the best way to render to a UIComponent which hasn't been added to the stage? (I'm using UIComponents as renderers for objects, and want to render new copies for image export, filtering, etc.)
Two strategies I've seen/used so far include realizing the component to ensure it calls all the lifecycle methods:
Add the component to Application.application, render with BitmapData.draw(), remove component. This is similar to what I've seen done for printing unrealized components as well.
Add the component to a pop up window, render with BitmapData.draw(), dismiss popup after rendering complete.
I believe both of these just rely on the UI not refreshing while the current thread/event is executing, though (1) could also rely on the component being realized out of view.
Is there a better way?
What I've used in the past with much success is the following:
Create a new instance of your component
Add an event listener for FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE
Set visible=false on the component
Add the component as a child of the main Application
When the component is created, the event listener function will be invoked. The rest of the logic should be put in / invoked from your event listener function
Remove the event listener you added in step #2.
Use ImageSnapshot.captureImage() or captureBitmapData() to capture the visual representation of the component.
Remove the component from the main Application
Process the image data as you need to.
I've used this to snapshot various Flex charting components for use in PDF's generated on the server side. After getting the BitmapData I use the PNGEncoder or JPEGEncoder classes to compress the data, then encode it in Base64 before uploading to the server.
I'm pretty sure you can use the draw() method in BitmapData without having your component on the DisplayList.
For example is use it when I need to modify images I load with the Loader Class. In the init handler I create a BitmapData instance and draw the Bitmap from the loadInfo.content property, then copyPixels() or whatever I need to modify the loaded image
So much of a UIComponent's layout can be tied to it's context. This is especially true for a lot of its derivatives (e.g. HBox) since the fluidity of the layout is tied to it's parent's size and the number of siblings sharing its parents space.
Additionally Flex can be a real pain to get to visually update. Often critical render functions aren't done synchronously ... there are callLater, callLater2 and other hacky approaches that make dealing with the auto-magical layout properties of UIComponents a major headache. Not even calling validateNow or updateDisplayList can guarantee that the layout will be correct on the current frame (instead of a few frames in the future).
I suggest the best thing you can do is not use a UIComponent and try and use a Sprite or other.
Your approach to attach it but make it invisible (alpha = 0, mouseEnabled = false, mouseChildren = false) is decent. You should listen for the FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE callback before you are certain it is properly laid out. Then you can bitmapData.draw it and then remove it from the stage. If you must use UIComponents then I know of no better way.
You can call the lifecycle function manually before using the BitmapData.draw(). Do the following.
createChildren().
commitProperties().
updateDisplayList().
bmd.draw().
The first 2 steps are not 100% necessary, you can put all codes into updateDisplayList(). Because you invoke the function manually, you don't have to worry this is invoked by Flex framework many times.