Omnicypher - Michael Imhoff

Issues with DataGrid Column Visibility

2007-03-13T04:29:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine passed along an interesting problem regarding DataGrids. They had the need to hide certain columns and then dynamically load the data. When doing this as expected, such as dataGridName.dataProvider = yourArrayName, the hidden columns would not stay hidden. The workaround to this issue is to track the visibility of each DataGridColumn, set the column to visible, and then

Form Validation

2007-03-13T03:33:00.000-04:00

Paul Rangel from Wheeler Street Design put together a simple form validator that works quite well. The only thing that you have to be aware of is the fact that you need to initialize the validators property after your form fields are added if you're using states.

Animator vs Animation

2007-03-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine just passed me the following YouTube video. It's a great example of someone who is extremely talented and creative with Flash. It's worth a watch. Enjoy!

Internal Build Error

2007-02-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

I recently ran into an issue with Flex Builder where I was getting the "An internal build error has occurred. Please check the Error Log." error when trying to debug my project. Absolutely nothing worked including all the normal practices such as cleaning the project, recreating the workspace, manually deleting the bin folder, reinstalling Flex Builder, etc. After performing all of these tasks I

Flex tree's with a context menu

2007-02-14T12:33:00.001-05:00

Recently on the flexcoders list a question was posed regarding how to get the item that was 'right-clicked on' when dealing with a tree. There are a few steps to follow if you plan to implement a context menu that is dynamic based on individual tree items. First, you need to use the itemRollOver event of the component to track the last item that was rolled over, and save it to a

Updated Flex Style Explorer v2.0.1

2007-02-14T00:25:00.000-05:00

I just realized that Adobe Consulting released a new version of the Flex Style Explorer. The style explorer is great if you want to see what you can do with CSS in flex. It's also a good way to start working with styles, although you must keep in mind that this is just the beginning of how you can tweak the look and feel of your flex applications. http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/consulting/

Flex Performance

2007-01-26T01:27:00.000-05:00

Brandon Purcell from Adobe put together a great article discussing flex performance and optimization. This articles includes many tips and tricks, along with general best practices to increase client performance. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/client_perf_print.html

Where's the problem?

2007-01-25T23:35:00.000-05:00

I recently ran into an issue with Flex Builder where the Problems tab wasn't accurately reporting information. It would show me the error, but it would simply show the project name under the resource column. All the normal attempts to resolve the issue didn't work including cleaning the project, recreating the project, and even reinstalling Flex Builder (w/2.0.1). Finally, the only thing that

Column Information

2007-01-20T02:21:00.000-05:00

Here's another extremely useful script that lists column information for all tables in a given database. The attached view contains just about anything related to a column definition in SQL Server 2000. The query that you'll see after the view definition contains the following columns. Table NameColumn NameType (and size if applicable)NullabilityDefault ValueDescriptionThere is a lot more

Extended Properties of Tables

2007-01-20T01:51:00.000-05:00

Here's another old but handy script that will list out extended properties on all tables for a given database. This comes in handy for documentation purposes, or to simply learn more about your db if your tables have any extended properties. You can download it here...

Foreign Key Information

2007-01-20T01:35:00.000-05:00

Quite some time back I put together a script for SQL Server 2000 that lists out all of the primary key to foreign key relationships. It's a simple script that generates a nice little listing which can be used to get a better understanding of a new database, or simply an easy way to help document an existing one. You can download it here...

Microsoft Breaks HTML Rendering in Outlook 2007

2007-01-10T18:07:00.000-05:00

I saw this on Digg, but figured it was worth mentioning. Apparently Microsoft chose to use the same html rendering engine in outlook that word uses, so get ready for a dumbed-down feature set. You need to be aware of this if you're sending out any html formatted emails. Here is a snippet of what you need to be aware of: no support for background images (HTML or CSS) no support for forms no

Case sensitivity in SQL Server

2007-01-08T12:10:00.000-05:00

Microsoft SQL Server by default is case-insensitive which for the most part is very handy when searching and sorting data. There are times though where this isn't ideal, such as managing usernames or passwords. If you take a look at the DDL of a table, you'll notice that most of your text-based columns including char and varchar fields use "COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS". If you would

NYC Gas Leak?

2007-01-08T10:59:00.000-05:00

If you're listening to the news, chances are they are talking about the gas leaks in NYC. Those of you who know me may also know that my roommate, aka, 'the doctor', is somewhat of a rocket scientist. He said that a single bottle of mercaptan could cause all of Manhattan to stink like gas, seeing that gas only has one part per billion of mercaptan added to it. Apparently a bad joke played on

Migrating Legacy Applications

2007-01-05T01:32:00.000-05:00

My most recent project involves WebFocus from Information Builders. Although WebFocus is a very powerful platform, the client was still using a fairly old version so we opted to move the application to SQL Server. This in itself was quite a task as WebFocus doesn't offer an ODBC connector to pull data out of it's proprietary database. WebFocus allows you to export data directly to SQL Server,

Great Sailing Video

2006-12-19T16:32:00.000-05:00

This is one of the best sailing videos that I've ever run across. There's a lot going on including trimarans, catamarans, monohulls, sail boarders, and kite surfers all interweaving each other at high speeds. So, are there any CF_Sailors out there?

More on Flash Activation

2006-12-19T03:28:00.000-05:00

Continuing with my last post, SWFObject is another script that can be used to automatically activate a flash movie. I prefer this as it's a bit more flexible when dealing with menus that can hover above flash movies. http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

Activating Flex Apps and Flash Movies

2006-12-19T03:14:00.000-05:00

It amazes me how many flex and flash apps that I run into that don't account for the ActiveX Activation Issue in IE. To prevent making a user click on the flash movie to activate it, and then interact with it, you can include a simple JavaScript file to automatically activate all flash movies upon load. Learn more and download the necessary files from http://www.sitepoint.com/article/

Organizing your flex apps with code behind

2006-12-11T18:55:00.000-05:00

As your flex apps get bigger and bigger, you may notice that many of your mxml files keep growing at an astonishing rate. First you just have a few component calls, then a couple of events, next thing you know it's ballooned to an mxml page with hundreds of lines of code. While this might not necessary be a bad thing, it can make it more difficult for other members of your team. The following

Interesting interview about Steve Wozniak

2006-12-08T23:11:00.000-05:00

I just read a good article about Steve Wozniak. It brings out a few little known secrets about him and the hand he had in creating Apple, along with details about what he's really like. Here's a funny tidbit: There are so many prank stories. I mean, they’re absolutely endless. Steve carries around books of two dollar bills. He actually goes to the mint — I guess if you have enough money, and you

Using a https certificate in Vista

2006-11-30T02:19:00.000-05:00

Quite often I find the need to develop locally for a site using https. You can do this with Self-Signed Certificates in IIS 7.0. You don't have to install anything, so it's much easier to set it up than it has been in the past. Open IISExpand your local serverClick on Server CertificatesSelect 'Create Self-Signed Certificate' on the right.Enter a name (ie - local)Click on Web SitesRight click on

ColdFusion Hosting at HostMySite.com

2006-11-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

I recently launched a new site that's being hosted on HostMySite.com. It's been quite some time since I've had a site that wasn't hosted in house and have to admit that using HostMySite was painless. Model-Glue works with their setup out of the box, and they were extremely helpful as we got things setup for the first time. You have to love 24*7 tech support that's actually 'with it'. My only

Password Manager XP on Vista - Part 2

2006-11-21T14:25:00.000-05:00

So, the guys over at CP-Lab finally got their password manager working properly on Vista. You need version 2.2.365 which you should be able to find here or the beta location if it hasn't been posted yet (2.2.363 was the latest posted version at time of writing). Make sure you right click on the install file and install it as an administrator, otherwise you will probably run into issues when the

Script Debugger for IE on Vista

2006-11-21T14:16:00.000-05:00

Since upgrading to Vista I have really missed the script debugger, it comes in extremely handy when working through your JS issues on IE. If you've never used it, you are missing out. It's quite a bit more powerful than the standard syntax checker that comes with Firefox, but I assume there are is a similar plug-in for Firefox. To start, go download it here. You need to save it locally, perform

Bold Text and Opacity Issue

2006-11-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

Quite often I use opacity to control how certain items look. For example, I want inactive items to be appear lighter to reflect the fact that they are inactive or not as important. To do this, I use

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. One of the things I've experienced is that bolded text does not always display correctly. To get around