Sweet. The page has more tips as well like getting partial stuff from your history. I don’t know how much of this will work on OSX but it’s still neat to see.

Access to command line history in BASH

To activate those two commands, add this to your .bashrc file:

bind ‘”\e[A”‘:history-search-backward
bind ‘”\e[B”‘:history-search-forward

Now you can easily summon any command from the history by typing the command and pressing Up arrow. You might continue pressing Up arrow until you find the command instance you wish to execute again.

Nice. Even for funny domains like .name, etc. Quicker than pulling up an app or going to a site that doesn’t handle the edge cases.

How do I find the authoritative name-server for a domain name? – Stack Overflow

% dig +short NS stackoverflow.com
ns52.domaincontrol.com.
ns51.domaincontrol.com.

I think I may have stumbled on a neat XML editor that runs as an Eclipse plugin. I like it already! Simple things like formatting XML, autocomplete of tags and attributes already present, and……generating a schema from xml… interesting. Works well for my VERY minor usage so far…

Rinzo Xml Editor – Eclipse xml editor

Rinzo is an Eclipse xml editor with the goal of make life simpler when dealing with xml files.
It has several features regarding plain xml edition such as:

* Autocompletion of tags and attributes, proposing the ones defined in the file’s DTD or Schema.
* xml validation using DTD or Schema, DTD and Schema generation from a xml
* Namespace support.
* And more

Really neat and nifty. This is for when you have those one liner strings of XML in a log or something (like CharlesProxy’s response pane) and you want to view it all nicely. Normally CharlesProxy does an excellent job… for well formatted XML. At least some code I was working with really wasn’t well formatted and even the noble Charles just gave me a oneliner. xmlling cleaned it right up though. Nice.

Notes: Pretty print XML

In case you didn’t know, you can pretty print XML with the xmllint command line tool that comes with libxml2, and its installed by default with Mac OS X.

Since there are no drivers available to print to a shared Pixma MX330 that I am aware of, I have been unable to print to the printer. And because there are no drivers that allow the DNS-323 to host the Pixma MX330 as well, that was out, too.

The following did work though, except actually printing to the printer. In step 5, instead of doing IP > LPR over IP, I used Advanced > Windows type, and used the smb://username:password@ip_address/GhostcriptLPR and that has been working today so far.

This process will ask for your XP disk to install a couple of specific DLLs when you get to adding the new services.

How to Use a Printer Attached to a Windows XP Computer in Mac OS X

This document gives a detailed explanation of how to set up an HP DeskJet 722C printer that is attached to a Windows XP computer so that the printer can be used by a Mac OS X computer on a local area network (LAN). If your printer is slightly different, or you have a different version of Windows, or you’re using a different Unix than Mac OS X, you’ll have to adapt these instructions with your own creativity.

And this is cool, too. I’m always looking for productivity tips and this is very cool. It really opens up a lot of possibilities.

deleteaso » Fix Textfields JSFL

Today Seb was having some issues when dealing with embedded fonts – read his post. He came up with some ActionScript ways to get around it. Well another way would be to use JSFL. A couple of my team members at Fuel Industries wrote the following JSFL script. It goes through your library and searches out any dynamic textfields. Once it finds one it makes sure it’s on a whole pixel, turns the auto kern off, embeds “UpperCase, LowerCase, Numerals, Punctuation” characters, and makes it not selectable. But you could make it do pretty much anything you can through JSFL.

Just wanted to keep a note on this for future reference. Very helpful!

onebyoneblog » Blog Archive » Flash UI Panel to Edit the Properties of Multiple Bitmaps

Basically, it’s just as I described – you highlight multiple Bitmaps in your .fla’s library, adjust the settings (allow smoothing, lossy/lossless, jpg compression quality), then click on the “execute” button and – presto – all items are instantly changed.

And here’s the info on the desktop version:

gskinner.com: gBlog: RegExr Desktop Released: Regular Expression Tool in AIR

I just uploaded the desktop version of RegExr. It’s just an AIR version of the online application for now, but I’ll add some desktop specific features, and put up a nicer looking page when I have a chance.

With this morning’s announcement of the AIR alpha for Linux, this means RegExr is now the first free tool for editing and testing regular expressions (RegEx) that runs on Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, and online (as far as I can determine). Pretty cool, considering it only took 60 minutes of work to convert the online application to a desktop program and add update notifications.

You can install the desktop version of RegExr here. Or, you can use the online version at regexr.com.

Update: This recently helped me convert some text from an select options dropdown list to text for a dataprovider to use within AS3. Nice! I usually use TextWrangler for stuff like this but Regex helps you iteratively see your progress as you match and replace data. Thank you Mr. Skinner!

I hadn’t seen this one before. There are other regex testers out there but this one is neat because it helps guide you. There are examples and tooltip help to let you know what you’re doing. Very neat. There is a downloadable version as well apparently. gskinner has been an indirect sort of long-distance teacher for some time now. He has a tremendous amount of resources available on his site.

Jason Sheedy’s blog: Handy regex tester for AS3

I found this tool really useful for testing regex in AS3. There’s a few of these around, but this one is very nicely done.. http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

Since this is being developed for others, the final concensus is to uncheck it and leave a README.txt that explicitly says so.

Accessing named MovieClips placed on the stage in Flash CS3 while staying true to OOP best-practices « dispatchEvent()™

I happen to agree with Sarah that the best way to work is to uncheck the checkbox and declare all of your variables yourself. This is the only way that really enforces good practices when you are using classes behind your MovieClips in the library.

And this states the issue well in a short sentence. Developing for Flash outside of the Flash IDE breaks into two camps if the “Automatically Declare Stage Instances” is checked or not. The solution mentioned below is another way (closer to the way I do) to get a reference not only as a movie clip but as a specific class object. That’s helpful when you’re adding linkages to your symbols with external classes.

Re: [Flashcoders] Automatically Declare Stage Instances andinheritance.

I think unchecking that box is the best way to handle this, but the other options presented are useful for working around these issues. My main worry seems to be incompatibilities with people who may write code using the box checked, which it is by default. It seems that this checkbox forks all AS3 code into two exclusive camps. I hope I make the right choice. C

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 3:58 AM, Cor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This will do the trick:
>
> private var okButton:SimpleButton = getChildByName(‘okButton’) as SimpleButton;

Mostly notes for reference. Although Ctrl+F2 doesn’t seem to work without first going somewhere else like the dock with Ctrl+F3. Odd… maybe something I broke already.

Keyboard – XvsXP.com, Mac OS X vs. Windows XP

Most special characters can be typed with the help of the option key. Use option when typing a letter or symbol, and OS X will substitute a special character. For instance, option-shift-4 will type a cent sign instead of a dollar sign.

In addition, typing characters with accents is extremely easy. Type option-e, for example, and OS X will insert a forwards accent, highlighted in yellow. Then, type another letter — an “e,” “a,” etc. — and OS X will place that letter below the accent mark. This lets you easily type words like “résumé.” You can use other option key combinations to type other accents as well, letting you easily type letters like “ñ” (option-n + n) or “ü” (option-u + u).

I have done this for AS2 using Flash Develop, and something similar to it using PureMVC for a Flash CS3 project developed within FlexBuilder, but it’s nice to see it “approved” of sorts. The issue? How do you access objects on the timeline in a strongly-typed manner. The blog post itself describes the situation well and this solution handles it well enough for me. The good thing is with this solution is that the movie clip name can of course change in the FLA and you only have this to update to keep it in sync.

Flex and Flash Developer – Jesse Warden dot Kizz-ohm » Blog Archive » Designer vs. Developer: Declaring Stage Instances

I think I’ve seen this approach in the Essential ActionScript 3 book and I’ve used it.

1. Leave the option turned on, so the Flash IDE will generate all the properties.
2. For every thing I need to refer and use code hinting I would do the following:

private function get scroller { return this["mcScroller"]; }

or something like this.

Mostly notes for reference. Although Ctrl+F2 doesn’t seem to work without first going somewhere else like the dock with Ctrl+F3. Odd… maybe something I broke already.

Keyboard – XvsXP.com, Mac OS X vs. Windows XP

Most special characters can be typed with the help of the option key. Use option when typing a letter or symbol, and OS X will substitute a special character. For instance, option-shift-4 will type a cent sign instead of a dollar sign.

In addition, typing characters with accents is extremely easy. Type option-e, for example, and OS X will insert a forwards accent, highlighted in yellow. Then, type another letter — an “e,” “a,” etc. — and OS X will place that letter below the accent mark. This lets you easily type words like “résumé.” You can use other option key combinations to type other accents as well, letting you easily type letters like “ñ” (option-n + n) or “ü” (option-u + u).

Many I knew, some I didn’t. But the author is right that it helps. The Tips & Tricks page has some nice notes as well.

Dan Rodney’s List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes

I like to figure out the fastest way to do things. I hope these shortcuts will help you become the power user that lies within. These keystrokes should work on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard (many also work on 10.4 Tiger). I add new shortcuts as I find them, so check back! I’m still exploring Snow Leopard and will be updating this page as I discover new goodies.

Neato. Just making notes but it’s good to see.

BUT REMEMBER TO SET “Permit debugging”. Drove me crazy for a while until I saw I hadn’t…

Big Bad Code » Blog Archive » Using Flexbuilder to edit and debug Flash Applications

Now you have the full power of Flexbuilder to code and debug and you still have the Flash IDE to layout movieclips and rapidly prototype things. Sweet.

But we do have to wait until Flash Builder 4 is released. It’s in beta now but… well when I get some time…

mikemo » New Flex Builder debugger features: Conditional breakpoints, function calls from expressions, watchpoints, and more

I wanted to tell you all about some of the exciting debugger features we’ve been working on, which will be in Flex Builder 4, including several of the most common requests. All of the features listed below are in the preview release of Flex Builder that we gave out at MAX, with the, um, exception of exception breakpoints, which are not yet in the product. If you were at MAX, give these features a try, and let us know your feedback! If you weren’t able to make it to MAX, don’t worry, this stuff will eventually show up in a beta on Adobe Labs, and then of course in the final product as well.

Lots of info on using Flex Builder to edit, but not so much on debugging. Just taking some notes.

Using FlexBuilder 3 to debug & edit Flash CS3 projects « The Morphic Group

Recently I was working on a project that due to a requirement had to be compiled in Flash CS3. Having spent the last few years exclusively using FlexBuilder I was shocked at the HORRIBLE AS3 editor and debugger in Flash CS3. I quickly tried to figure out how to edit and debug from FlexBuilder 3. I got some help along the way, and wanted to share the process.

Good to know. And it does make sense as described in the comments. This is for my future reference and for others who may experience it.

In a nutshell, if you have a getter/setter pair and make them [Bindable], the setter will not execute again if the new incoming value is the same as the current value. That speeds up performance but if you always need to check that value, it might be a bit confusing why it’s not executing.

nwebb » One Reason Why Your Flex Getter May Not Execute

Cause
As soon as you make the getter/setter bindable, Flex stops running the setter whenever the value you’re sending in already matches the value that the corresponding getter will return.

Solution
The solution (or at least one solution) is not to rely upon the default propertyChange event which is dispatched for bindable values, and instead create/dispatch a custom event

™ and ® ‘’ “” µ all kinds of groovy hard to type things

Keyboard Shortcuts for special characters

So for this particular Flash AS3 project I am doing that uses Flex as the code editor, I was just about to write a getter/setter pair and thought “perhaps someone has made a way to automate this…”

Quick Google later…

No More Writing Getters and Setters in Flex

eokyere blog has one of the best Flex productivity tips I have seen in quite a while. I build AS3 components all day, and spend way too much time manually typing getter and setter methods. Using the Dash plugin for Eclipse and eokyere’s productivity with with dash in eclipse, you’ll never write another getter and setter again!

A nice template for Flex for incorporating SWFObject, history, and deep linking.

Just Flex: Swfobject 2.1 Flex template. HistoryManager and DeepLinking supported as well

I have been using Geoff Stearns’ SWFObject for a long time. I think it will be useful to share my index.template.html that tuned for using with SWFObject 2 2.1. I was inspired with Ted Patrick’s FXWidget project that uses SWFObject 1.5 for embedding flex content to html page. So now it supports HistoryManager and DeepLinking.

Just want to keep a reference to this one

Tyler Egeto

I’ll be releasing more tools and helpers in the near future as I formalize / clean-up my existing code libraries. In addition to the ActionScript pagination system released earlier this month, PaginatorAS3, today I’m release a small Tooltip system.

I haven’t had to use this yet but it’s definitely a gotcha to keep in mind if doing deep copies and things aren’t working exactly right…

On [Transient], ObjectUtil.copy(), and Casting – darron schall

I ran into an interesting situation not too long ago where ObjectUtil.copy wasn’t working quite as I had expected. The solution that I came up with was to rely on [Transient] metadata. Confused? Let me explain…

Going to try to get back into blogging… again…! It’s just been super busy which is a good thing all things considered.
After learning a neat little shortcut on copying objects using a byte array, there was a link to this for duplicating DisplayObjects. Quite useful.
kirupaForum – View Single Post – ActionScript 3 Tip of the Day

ActionScript 3 no longer has a duplicateMovieClip method for MovieClip instances (or any DisplayObject instances). Instead, it’s suggested that you just create a new instance of the display object you wish to duplicate using its constructor. This, however, is not the same as duplicateMovieClip, and, really, is more like using AS1 and AS2’s attachMovieClip. For a more accurate representation of duplicateMovieClip in AS3, consider the following function…