Archive for May, 2007

When you refresh the browser with a flex app running fullscreen, obviously the flex app should be focused…. but it’s not

Here’s a really easy way to set keyboard focus on your flex or flash embeded code. Basically, just paste the code below into the bottom of your html. After the page loads, this code gets called and sets the focus on your embeded swf. Continue Reading »

Check out this article by Andrew Neitlich on moving from an independant contractor to a business owner. He makes some solid points about the decision process (making sure you are up to the task) and then walks you through 4 business approaches/models to consider.

Witango Studio 6, the long awaited update to the current version (5.5) is finally in beta. Macintosh users are getting to play with it right now and us Windows users are patiently waiting our turn. What has changed? Everything from the ground up, according to the development team. This time they built the whole development studio from the ground up using Java. As soon as I get a chance to play with it I’ll report on what is new.

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A few months ago Mozilla announced that the organization will only continue to support version 1.5.0.x of the browser through late April. The information came via a security update for both Firefox 1.5 and 2.0, with an extra note saying that the older version will be “maintained with security and stability updates until April 24, 2007.” After that date Firefox 1.5 will no longer receive updates from Mozilla and all remaining users should upgrade to Firefox 2 if they want to keep receiving updates to the browser.

To keep it interesting, Firefox 3.0 is already well into Alpha (version 5 comes out next week), Beta 1 is expected in July of 2007, and they have posted an estimated release of November on their roadmap. You can get more details from the release schedule posted on the Mozilla website. Curious what they are up to? So were we. Mozilla has a site just for us developers stating some of what’s new. Some cool css improvements, a move to javascript 1.8, support for regular expressions, and much more.

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We had a situation requiring up and down buttons, and we wanted them to scroll a list. The catch is how to animate the scrolling. Here’s how we did it. Continue Reading »

Firefox add-ons, also known as extensions, and sometimes confused with pluggins, have completely cemented our loyalty to Firefox as a development tool. Why? Because these little tools are so powerful, and Firefox has provided significantly more options than Internet Explorer or Safari. Not sure what add-ons are? They are small pieces of software that add new features or tiny tweaks to your browser. Many are useless, but some are absolutely spectacular.
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I know it’s super simple, but I’ve been banging my head on text layout for a couple of hours. I wanted 2 text boxes to have less space between them (leading) than the default. After trying many approaches, I finally figured out that I can set a negative paddingBottom to achieve the desired effect. Continue Reading »

Version control allows multiple people to work on exactly the same piece of code without overwriting each others’ work. Each person works on their own copy, and, once they have it finished and debugged, they merge it back into the main repository.
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The stronger our ability to communicate effectively, the happier we tend to be. Understanding how people react to situations and how to respond appropriately is a key to success in business, in marriage, in friendship, and in life.
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Staying at home to raise a child is one of the most important jobs you can do. But it’s not just one job. Apart from being a short-order cook, nurse, personal shopper, housekeeper, teacher, entertainer, photographer, family website blogger, and activity director, I also continue to freelance design for various businesses. I’m not the only one that does this either. In fact, there are many moms working AND raising their kids from home. It takes a lot of creativity, time management, and flexibility.
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