I wish to upgrade my web site development environment. Currently using Adobe Dreamweaver (out of habit), but need to
Write HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL code in an editor with syntax highlighting, code/tag completion, code hints.
have a browser window that reflects the code window results (on a save). So write HTML/CSS code, save it, and the browser window is updated
support for major browsers (choose the browser to be used in the display window)
allow adjust of browser window width to see responsiveness of my code
supports latest CSS, including CSS Grid and Flexbox
Windows 10 environment; not interested in adding Linux (WSL)
will consider an XAMP/WAMP environment for testing of PHP/MySQLi code locally
free or low-cost programs are preferred (I'm on a limited budget, but will spend the $ for what is needed)
An important part is things running in Windows 10 environment, and the side-by-side display of a code and browser windows in the editor.
I realize this might be an 'opinion' question (and will probably get some downvotes), but need to get some directions to look at. The googles haven't been helpful yet.
If I understand correctly you need a text editor that can help you to indent your code and highlight your errors ?
Try to take a look at https://code.visualstudio.com/. Vs Code Editor
You can find a lot of extension to help you write code and find errors
Air 3 for mobile introduces a nice feature - StageText. I have seen a few videos showing what the end result looks like, but I cannot find how to actually implement it in code.
There is this page here, however, when trying to add the extra properties to the s:TextInput elements, I only get errors. Obviously, something is missing.
Anyone out there have any hints or working examples?
Thanks!
The new TextInput enhancements are part of the Flex 4.6 SDK which has not been released yet (as of 11/3/2011). If you want access to it right now, you need to sign up for the pre-release program.
I can't get flash preloaders to work when there is a a # in the url of my page (even without any deep linking libraries or logic). I am using flex 3.3. Flash plugins 9 and 10, all browsers.
There is this bug regarding # in the url preventing preloaders from working:
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14162
However, somehow, someone, somewhere has ways around this. Here are somewhat working examples (remember to clear your cache to ensure you see the preloader awesomeness):
http://www.adobecards.com/index.html#wtf
http://www.escriba.es/base_en.html#wtf
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/onceuponatimeinmexico/site/mexico.html#wtf
http://instinct.ru/flash.html#wtf
http://www.alternativedesign.tv/plant5.html#wtf
However, these do not work (no preloader at all or momentarily stuck on 100%):
http://www.flashmagazine.com/articlefiles/preloader_finished.html#wtf
http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/colors/Colors.html#wtf
http://whoswestudios.com/flashsite.html#wtf
http://www.iotashan.com/examples/NotSoCustomPreloader/index.html#wtf
So, what is going on here? I suspect the flex framework.
Anyone know where to look in the flex code? Or is this bug deeper than anyone but adobe can fix?
Few things going on here.
(1) Looks like the quickest pre-loader from my #wtf examples is from Adobe. They load a very small container.swf, which then loads their 3mb main swf (amongst other biggies).
(2) Some of the others "preloaders" aren't really preloaders. Their opening animations play when the whole thing is loaded.
I believe the problem you are having is that you have your assets loading into the same frame as your preloader assets and code. Flash doesn't display a frame until it has been loaded to its entirety, cause your preloader not to be seen during load, and then covered up by the new asset after.
As a flex developer you do not have a timeline, so this is why it is important to use a small "container" as you call it or as loader movie. This movie is to have a tiny foot print so that it is available asap. Upon completion of load, the container can then call the main movie into itself, tracking the incoming data with the ProgressEvent.
It is hard to know exactly what the issue is from what you have said, but this is a common problem. Fonts, and any other embedded items either need to be embedded on frame 2 or laterm which I believe you can only do with the flash IDE, or you require the extra loader swf, lightweight and quick to load!
I have successfully deeplinked the following with preloaders
http://www.madagascargame.com
http://www.kungfupandagame.com
I recently started to develop using Flex 3 and Adobe Air and I wanted to know what features you want to be in futures releases of Adobe Air ?
The ones that I miss are:
Cross-systems way of launching a local file (shellExec) right from an Air application (although you can do this using workaround at least under Windows)
Ability to setup dynamic paths for Embed statement (e.g. Embed[(variable+"/path/to/file")] ). I didn't find any way to do this properly.
Some way of setting Flex object's positions with absolute values from CSS (that sounds more Flex related by the way)
Don't hesitate to add your workarounds to theses limitations if you know somes.
Ability to call out to native code - you currently have to ship a server written in another language and make calls to that to do anything more than Air gives you.
Modal windows. There's a hack you can do which involves setting Application.application.enabled = false, setting dialog.nativeWindow.alwaysInFront = true and then re-enabling the application when the dialog closes, but this is long-winded and doesn't disable any native menus you may have! It's crazy that something so simple is made so difficult.
A usable way to set the application's icon. I spent 2 hours trying to do this the other day and gave up after persistent "303" errors that gave me no idea of what I was doing wrong. Again, really basic stuff.
"Call native code", "Modal windows", agree-agree.
loadLibrary would be really great :)
ps.:
if we can not have this features in AIR, if would be awesome to have an opportunity to embed flash(AIR) graphics engine into your own app. in that case we'll get great performance improvement and liberty of choice what to write (not only small gadgets).
I am working on an ASP.Net web application that must print dynamically created labels on standard Avery-style label sheets (one particular size, so only one overall layout). The labels have a variable number of lines (3-6) and may contain either lines of text or a graphic barcode image.
Our first cut, that I inherited, used monospaced fonts to reduce the formatting issues, but that did not allow enough text to the fit on the labels and the customer was dissatisfied. Basically it was formatted text.
My next version used TABLEs, DIVs, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript calculations to format the labels using proportional fonts. It still required a bit of tweaking (the user had to set their print margins correctly and turn off the print headers and footers), but it seemed to work.
However, it seems that there are some variations on how different printers render the text (WYS ain't WYG), so even though we tested on different browsers using at least two different printers (an inkjet and a laser printer), some user's labels don't line up. Slight margin variations can be adjusted by adjusting the margins on the page setup dialog, but the harder problem is that the inter-label spacing can be off by a tiny fraction of an inch, so that if the first label is pretty well centered, by the end of the page the label text and images have crawled off the top or bottom of the labels.
We are about to the point of switching to generating Word, Excel, or PDF output which is going to take quite a bit of development time and possible add extra steps in the printing process.
So, does anyone have any suggestions on how to do an HTML/CSS layout that will precisely render on different types of printers? I don't really care if the line/word breaks are a bit different, but I need to be able to predictably position the upper left corners of each label area.
Right now the labels flow down the page in a table and we have been tweaking the box model of the cells and internal DIVs to make them a uniform height. I suspect that using absolute positioning of each element may be the best answer, but that is going to be tricky as well due to the ASP.Net generation of the label elements. If I knew for sure that would work, I would rather try it than throw away everything we have to go to a different generation method.
Slight Update:
Right now I'm doing some tests with absolute positioning - setting only the top and left coordinate of a containing block element. So far there are minor variations on the offset onto the page (margins, paper alignment, etc.), but all browsers and printers tested put the elements in exactly the right spots relative to each other. I appreciate the PDF tips, but does anyone know of additional "gotchas" on using absolute positioning this way?
Update:
For the record, I rewrote the label printing portion using iTextSharp and it works perfectly - definitely the way to do this in the future...
Forget HTML and make a PDF. HTML printing is extremely variable - not just across browsers but across different versions of the same browser. PDF is a lot easier.
Even if you get it exactly right with one browser / font setup / printer / phase of the moon, it will be the most fragile thing you've ever had to maintain. No matter how long you think it will take to make a PDF (and it's not really that hard as there are some free libraries out there), HTML will ultimately take a lot more of your time. PDF readers are widely deployed and print more consistently than even Word files.
The web is not a format that is guaranteed to get consistent print results. Given the standard support for label printing with MS Word, and the relative ease of automation and generation, I would strongly recommend going that route.
I'm not aware of ANY method to get percise printing across all types of browsers, operating systems, and printers when using web content.
"precisely" and "printing" aren't two words that really work together that well. I did an OCR/OMR application a year or so ago, and even when building a PDF I saw significant differences between different print drivers and such. Because of that, my gut is to tell you that you might not have 100% success.
If CSS and layout issues don't work that well for you, you might need to resort to building the labels as images using GDI+ -- at least that way you can use GetFontMetrics() and such.
Good luck!
I had a similiar issue and the answer is you can't do it. Instead, I generated a PDF file in realtime using iTextSharp and passed that to the response.
Using SQL Server Reporting Services, I generate a PDF to send to the printer, but it can be seen as HTML on the screen using the control you can include in your web pages. There are RDLC files that are available on the internet to print to various Avery formats.
I rewrote the SharpPDFLabel code that was mentioned back in 2011 this week as I needed it to be a lot more flexible (and to work with the current iTextSharp library).
You can get it here:
https://github.com/finalcut/SharpPDFLabel
I added the ability to specify the contents of each individual label if you want (or to continue creating a sheet of identical labels too). By extending the LabelDefinition class you can specify the layout of your labels pretty easily.
I also struggled with the HTML/CSS approach due to the inconsistent printing behaviour across browsers.
I created a C# library to produce Avery Labels from ASP.NET which I hope you might find useful:
https://github.com/wheelibin/SharpPDFLabel#readme
You can add images and text to the labels, and it's easy to define more labels types.
(I use it for barcode labels, the barcode is generated as an image and then added to the label using this library.)
Cheers
Add a few options to your app that let users adjust spacing for their particular configuration. You could include this right on the label if you want, and style it away via media selectors, but you'll probably want to persist them somewhere, too.
Flash is also good method to push a printable like a label albeit a little more complex to implement and maintain. In most cases it displays much quicker than a PDF and you can embed it into the design of the page and simply add a "Print" button within the flash.
I did this several years ago when we were using HTML and PDF to generate confirmation receipts. HTML is "ok" but is at the mercy of the end users web browser so we quickly dumped that method. PDF's are good as long as they have a PDF reader, which to our surprise a lot of our customers did not. So that was dumped as well after we switched to a FLASH version using a simple flash movie that included a few dynamic text areas and a "print" button. I communicated the data between the page and flash using a few flash vars. You can also use web service.
When I need something more than just simple text I use the free community edition of the PDF Generator component from DynamicPDF.com. It works great and is very quick.
I just went through the same thing. Ended up switching and making a short little JSF app (running on Glassfish) that uses JasperReports to print directly to the lable printer. Push button, instant label at the printer, don't even have to view it on-screen if you don't want to since Jasper can directly output to printer (as well as PDF in browser).