dougrdotnet

I kinda like this new skin, change is good!  I think this is much less cluttered and, althought there is some overflow - will work on that - i really like the additional width available for code samples.

Meme(me) Doug as i am right now

Following on from Mark Drew’s Post, here I am at almost 1:00 AM, up playing with Virtual Machines.

If you want to join in this meme the rules are:

1. Take a picture of yourself right now
2. Don’t fix your hair, don’t change your clothes, just take the picture
3. Post that picture with no editing
4. Post these instructions with the picture

A Wee Dram is a London ColdFusion conference in replacement for the sadly Cancelled CFDEVCON (http://cfdevcon.com).

Date: Thursday, 25th September 2008
Time: 10am to 6pm
Location: Square Pig

30 - 32 Proctor Street
Holborn
London
WC1R 4QG

This is a chance to see some of the best ColdFusion Speakers from the US and of course the UK’s own Mark Drew (What ColdFusion Conference would be complete without him).

Schedule
10:00 - Key Note - From Adam Lehman & Claude Englebert
11:00 - Break
11:15 - Coldspring by Mark Drew
12:15 - Break
12:30 - RAD Object Oriented CF Development by Peter Bell
13:30 - Lunch
14:15 - High Availability: Clustering ColdFusion Applications by Mike Brunt
15:15 - Break
15:30 - Subversion - better living through branches by Sean Corfield
16:30 - Break
16:45 - Setting up a Solid Level Local Dev Environment by Kurt Wiersma
17:45 - Thank Yous & Raffles
18:00 - Networking in the bar

Registration is open now and numbers are limited.

I had the opportunity to be interviewd by Dan Florio of polygeek regarding my series, in progress, about Prototyping Using Business Delegate.  I talk about an overview of what i am doing, some challenges related to writing the series, and the benefits of using the Business Delegate pattern for developing prototypes.  I had a great time doing the interview, my first, and Dan was quite a gracious host - so thank you Dan!

I sat in on the 360Flex Keynote this morning.  I was absolutely moved by the code jam volunteer coders who put together the Second Harvest Food Bank application.  Also, 360Flex Conferences donated 10 percent of their profits to this non-profit to help provide food to those in need.

As for the remainder of my day, here on the last day of this most excellent conference.

I am attending:

• 10:00 Tony Hillerson & Juan Sanchez’ See the Data, Be the Data
• 1:00 Jun Heider’s Using the Flex Builder 3 Profiler
• 2:30 RJ Owen & Brad Umbaugh’s Diving Deep with Component Lifecycle
• 4:00 Ryan Stewart’s Synchronizaton with Air and LiveCycle DS

Wow, this week has gone fast.  I have had a chance to meet, face to face, a bunch of my twitter friends.  I have had the opportunity to meet several new friends as well, even two who live and work nearby me.  This conference was all about networking when outside of the sessions and I tell you, employment opportunities with Flex abound.  The session content has ranged the entire skill/knowledge set and has been fun, informative, and absolutely interesting.

If you have an opportunity to attend a 360Flex conference then be sure to attend, I have not been dissapointed what so ever.

Another day here at the 360Flex conference and currently sitting in Jeffry Houser’s presentation on How to Build Flex Components.Looks like I am going to be concentrating on components prior to lunch today and then moving into frameworks, databinding and dashboards.

• 8:30 Jeffry Houser’s How to Build Flex Components
• 10:00 Josh Tynjala’s Polishing Components for the Masses
• 1:00 Ben Stucki - How to Build a Framework
• 2:30 Michael Labriola’s Diving in the Data Binding Waters
• 4:00 Tom Gonzalez’ Data Visualization and Dashboards

The really cool think about these tracks today is that the are all in the same conference room as well, that never happens.

I’m actually sitting in the Adobe Keynote at 360Flex being presented by Mark Anders with Adobe. A little late to determine my schedule for today but i wanted to remain flexible and determine what types of information I want to take with me.

10:00 Kevin Fauth’s Ticketmaster Kiosk demo

1:00 Laura Arguello’s Mate Flex Framework presentation

2:30 Ben Clinkinbeard’s Strategies for creating reusable components

4:00 I’m torn, there are two presentations of interest to me today

• Jonathan Branam’s Improve your programming by reading the flex source code
• Jacob Write’s Advanced Actionscript APIs

Edgelink is currently looking for Sr. Level Flex developers for contract to hire opportunities in Portland (Please see below for details). The JAVA requirements are small (20% JAVA/ 80% FLEX). Edgelink is an equal opportunity employer.

To learn more about this opportunity please contact:
Christ Amend
(503) 246-3989
Christi@edgelink.com
The scoop:

A job? An opportunity? A career? Our client is not hung up on the
term you want to use to describe it… After all, that’s just a matter
of semantics, and we’ve got that covered! What our client cares about
is continuing to build a team of dedicated people who are excited
about working for a recognized semantic technology leader. Semantic
technologies are poised to revolutionize the world of information
management and our client is committed to leading the way into this
exciting new space.

Are you interested in being a part of designing, developing,
marketing, and selling next-generation software today? If so, this
could be the place for you. Working for a client is challenging,
rewarding and fun. They value intelligence, flexibility, creativity,
diversity and enthusiasm. They are always on the lookout for
candidates who want to be an integral part of a company where hard
work is acknowledged, rewarded and…Well…Appreciated!

So, if you’re a talented individual who wants to join the ranks of a
fast-paced, dynamic organization and the term “start-up” doesn’t make
you jumpy, drop us a line!

If you are interested in applying to this position, please email a
brief cover letter and resume in Word/.doc format to
christi@edgelink.com.

Requirements:
Environment: FLEX, JAVA, J#, web service API, Flex Component library,
Eclipse RCP

Skills Required (must have):
Java developer
- Bachelors degree required
- 2+ years experience in application server development with Java
- Experience with Java, JSP, XML
- Experience implementing server components including state and
session management
- Object oriented design and development experience is required
- Working knowledge of Web Services, JSON, AMF, Tomcat

Flex Client Developer
• Adobe Flex
• ActionScript 3
• MXML
• OOP
• MVC Experience (Pure MVC or other MVC framework a plus) • XML

Experience with the following is preferred:
• Flash
• Adobe AIR
• HTML/JavaScript/CSS
• Creating custom components for Flex/Flash • AMF, Web Services, or
JSON

• Understand design and implementation of a Flex component
library
used to display Thetus Publisher data in rich and innovative ways in
Flex rich web applications. This includes components for displaying
geospatial data in several different mapping components, time based
data in a custom timeline control, and a layered “paint by numbers”
editing tool similar to a layered image editor.
• Designing and implementing the exception handling mechanism
that
works between the web service API’s and the Flex component library,
including handling of invalid logins and session expiration.
• Technical lead for designing and implementing a web service
API for
easily talking to the Client’s Publisher using any web service
enabled client. This API will be used by the Flex component library
when creating rich Client web applications.
• Designed and implemented an Eclipse RCP based administration
tool
called Timberline used to manage and maintain the Client Publisher.
This included creation of an update site, where patches and optional
downloadable components were made available to customers.

Experience Required (must have): Experience working with similar
types of applications within a young smart team environment with a
preference for small to mid size startup environments.

Plusses (desired skills/experience)
Wrapped Internet Explorer inside of a Net user control to allow IE
to function in edit mode inside of a .Net application Developed an
HTML parser using Java that fixes up HTML and generates XHTML (or
XML) from the HTML data.
Using Java to redesigned and implemented localization and
internationalization support framework Designed and implemented a
source control integration system Managed a small technical team in
the GUI design decisions and development process Designing and
implementing a new C# client Designed and implemented a new mass
email engine Extranet application. Experience writing migration
scripts to convert the old email engine data to the new email engine
data.
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science/ Engineering Strong desire to
learn and understand how to be a great developer to our client and
the Development team

We’ll be looking for the ability to make contributions to the overall
implementation beyond the specific assigned task by using experience
to suggest improvements to design or implementation architecture.
Demonstrated aptitude to rapidly learn new approaches and
technologies. We work on solving problems that aren’t already solved
so creativity and a willingness to work without a complete definition
is essential.

On a current project I had the need to incorporate a button into a Panel title bar which would allow users to launch a new intake form. I also needed to use this panel in four different places. First option was to create a Panel component and absolutely position a button by placing the Panel container within a Canvas container. I really don’t like absolute positioning and before this was considered I had already begun researching extending Panel over on Doug McCune’s Blog. However, related to the problem which I was trying to solve, his really cool example was just a point in the right direction for me. Ultimately, Simeon, reminded me that I had a perfect example available in my Adobe Flex 2 Training from the Source book. So here is how to extend the Panel class and add custom properties to suit your needs, in this case the addition of a button placed in title bar.

package com.douglasReynolds.views.components
{
	import flash.events.Event;
	import mx.containers.Panel;
	import mx.controls.Alert;
	import mx.controls.Button;

	public class NewFormPanel extends Panel
	{
		//declare button var
		private var newFormButton:Button;

		private function doCreateForm(event:Event):void{
			//create an event - just an Alert for testing here
			Alert.show("Button Clicked");
		}
		//override the createChildren method with the properties I need
		protected override function createChildren():void{
			super.createChildren();
			//instantiate new button and assign properties
			newFormButton = new Button();
			newFormButton.label = "New";
			//add event listener for click event and call method
			newFormButton.addEventListener("click", doCreateForm);
			newFormButton.visible = true;
			//add the button to rawChildren
			rawChildren.addChild(newFormButton);
		}
		//update the display and get panel size - dynamic since the form can be resized
		protected override function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void{
			super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth, unscaledHeight);
			//gap between label and edges of button
			var margin:int = 4;
			//set the button size + margin
			newFormButton.setActualSize(50 + margin, 16 + margin);
			//define vars which determine distance from right and top of Panel
			var pixelsRight:int = 10;
			var pixelsTop:int = 4;
			//define var to width of button
			var buttonWidth:int = newFormButton.width;
			//set x and y properties to be used for positioning of button
			var x:Number = unscaledWidth - buttonWidth - pixelsRight;
			var y:Number = pixelsTop;
			//position the button in the panel
			newFormButton.move(x, y);
		}
		//constructor
		public function NewFormPanel()
		{
			super();
		}

	}
}

Then, all we have to do is use our NewFormPanel in MXML instead of Panel:

<components:NewFormPanel xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="100%" height="100%" xmlns:components="com.douglasReynolds.views.components.*">
     //note the addition of components namespace to NewFormPanel properties
     //all of your normal stuff that you want to put in a panel
</components:NewFormPanel> 

I was contacted today by my friend Shannon Malcom, with Edgelink, about what sounds like an excellent Flex position available in Portland. If this position looks like a good fit then be sure to contact her right away.

To learn more about this opportunity please contact: Shannon Malcom (503) 246-3989 shannon@edgelink.com

Flex Developer - Direct Hire – Portland Oregon

Are you interested in being a part of designing, developing, marketing, and selling next-generation software today? If so, we could be the place for you. Working for us is challenging, rewarding and fun. We value intelligence, flexibility, creativity, diversity and enthusiasm. We are always on the lookout for candidates who want to be an integral part of a company where hard work is acknowledged, rewarded and…well…much appreciated!

So, if you’re a talented individual who wants to join the ranks of a fast-paced, dynamic organization…drop us a line.

Requirements:

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science/ Engineering
• 1-3 years experience in application server development with Java
• Experience with Java, JSP, XML
• Experience implementing server components including state and session management
• Object oriented design and development experience is required
• Working knowledge of Web Services, JSON, AMF, Tomcat
• Flex Tools Knowledge:
  • Adobe Flex
  • Action Script 3
  • MXML
  • OOP
  • MVC Experience (Pure MVC or other MVC framework a plus)
  • XML

Experience with the following is preferred:

• Flash
• Adobe AIR
• HTML/JavaScript/CSS
• Creating custom components for Flex/Flash
• AMF, Web Services, or JSON
• Using Java to redesign and implement localization and internationalization support framework
• Designed and implemented a source control integration system
• Managed a small technical team in the GUI design decisions and development process
• Designing and implementing a new C# client