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Showing posts from November, 2010

Default Flex DateChooser to tomorrow

I have a DateChooser control and I was trying to default it to have tomorrow's date selected. This is actually really easy to do, but it took me a fair amount of time to figure it out, so I thought I'd post this just in case anyone else has some trouble. Create a variable for today's date: [Bindable] private var today:Date = new Date(); Then set the selected date of the DateChooser. You may also want to set showToday to false so that today's date isn't highlighted. <mx:DateChooser selectedDate="{new Date(today.fullYear,today.month,today.date+1)}" showToday="false"/> The selectedDate property only understands straight dates with no time, which is why I had to assign it this way. If you're at the end of the month/year Flex is smart enough to know that date + 1 should take you to the next month/year. Here is a sample with view source enabled.

Word wrap in AdvancedDataGrid

So getting a column field to wrap in an AdvancedDataGrid isn't as easy as just setting the "wordWrap" property to true. Maybe it should be, but it isn't. First thing's first. Do you have an itemRenderer on the column you're trying to wrap. If the answer is yes you have to make sure that itemRenderer is based on a wrappable component. For argument's sake, lets say you have a Label itemRenderer, well you're going to have to change that to be based on Text, and you're going to have to give it a width to give it the capability to wrap (percentWidth = 100 works nicely). Then set your wrap-able column to wordWrap = true . Finally set your AdvancedDataGrid to have property variableRowHeight = true . Here is a link to an example with the view source enabled.

My first experience doing contextual research

For some back story – I’ve been on this project for 2 years now. I’ve helped design and build two dashboards and have never had the opportunity to meet or talk with a user until now and I am no expert in the client's line of business. I met with 7 users from 3 different user groups; 1 group per day; 30-45 minutes with each user, followed by an hour group session discussing the observations. A lot of them have similar issues. Issues within groups of users seem to be pretty much the same. I found myself getting frustrated and having to consciously calm myself down while meeting with the users. Seeing the roundabout way some of them had to work just to use the system drove me crazy. If I had only been involved from the beginning in this capacity, and with the requirements gathering for each release, these poor users wouldn't have to deal with a system that really doesn't meet their needs. But hey, better late than never I suppose. That is the story of my life... the story of