Meet with Expert

Thursday, June 14, 2007

3 big problems using Flex.


After playing Flex 2 for a while, there are 3 parts I don't like the product.


1. Unable to load animated gif file, the only place I saw the possibility is paying money. (though it is not expensive.)


"There is an updated product page with full information. This is a commercial component for sale for $50.
I’ve updated the API a bit, released the ASDoc documentation, and put together a small Apollo application that will let you test the component to see if it will work with the animated gifs you want to load."


I just can not understand why Adobe can't make it as a part of their product. SWFloader is fine, but comparing with normal AJAX application, animated gif now is easy to produce.


2. Memory leading by using Flex. After running Flex for 1 - 2 hours, memory would go up to 1-1.5 Gb. Even after killing flex, memory is not destroyed.


3. Why not introducing Table in Interface design?

Using Flex 2 to Build RSS Feed.

Recently, I spent a few days working on a Flex application for RSS feed. Well, I must admit it is a hard job.

If using HttpServies, Flex can consume the result easily and a few lines a code can do the job well. But it has a major problem, it can not read our all feeds provided by various provider.

So, I decided to go through a hard way, by consuming web services, and Asp.net to read website and provide web services. xmlTextReader class is quick reading xml from other webpages. Again, it comes to the quesetion, how to write a generic code catering for various node format.

Looking at Google Reader or Google AJAX Blog Feed, it is so powerful to translate the different language well and display it well. -- To make it practically useful, it is really taking lots of efforts.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Security Setting can turn your AJAX off.

Today, I spent my whole day figuring out how MS AJAX toolkit work. Well, it was a such easy process as specified in its video tutorial. Having a video showing how to do it step by step, I thought it is just invisible, would be super fast.

1. After installing toolkit, I found it is not working though AJAX partially worked. OK, let me reading its release notes thoroughly.
2. After reading release notes, it is recommended to install service pack for Visual Studio.
3. Downloading the service pack is 450Mb, thank you Microsoft.
4. Installing the SP1, take me around 4 hours. Why it is just that sloooow. In the middle, C drive run out of space. Then I rushed to move some stuff to D.
5. Thank you, SP1 installation eventually finished. Try it again, not working...
6. Figure crossed, what can runs wrong, Oh, need to un-install AJAX entension, then reinstall.
7. Oops, after the step, not working.
8. Try the copy in Microsoft site, why it works, mine not worked.
9. Try the copy in another server, which I know it worked before. Bingo, today, it was not working!!! But nobody touched it recently.
10. Try Firefox, it worked locally and for the server copy. Well, I know what is wrong, the damn browser.
11. OK, my Explorer was corrupted, reinstall it Explorer 7. Not working.
12. OK. It must be security setting, after some changes, it worked fine.

Because MS site is trusted site, same code worked there but not for me locally or my company server. Took me a day.