Flex 4 (Gumbo) wish list
I was invited by Mihaela Barbu to Adobe Romania : we will talk about how I use Flex, what’s so God damn good about it, and most important, my Flex 4 wish list. Since the meeting is next week, I’ll have to put together a list – I usually write this kind of lists on my desktop or talk about them to my beloved one (someday I’ll buy her diamonds for the patience of listening me talking like a mad scientist). This time I will do it different, having the proof over time beside me – and hoping that all points will be checked (did you saw The Bucket List?).
Now seriously, why would a Flex developer complete such a list, immediately after Flex 3 SDK was released? And you see, all that comes into my mind is related to Flex Builder because as a developer, if I need something and the SDK permits it, I’ll just start building. Ok, there are some parts – like garbage collection – which will go to this wish list. So here is the thin list, three ways:
A. Wishes for the Adobe Flash Player
- #1. Chronologically, the first unresolved issue is the black application controls (there is no possibility to set the text selection color). I wish that the Flash player will let the developer choose the text selection color, or present an video inverse color scheme to avoid the workaround.
- #2. Encouraging the use of PDF : how nice it will be when the Flash player will contain code for saving PDF instead of printing and all that from a Flex application? I’m sure that the day when this is possible without needing third party software, will be a D-day for the Flex developers and Flex applications. I guess you’ve got my point…
- #3. This point is more about the wrapper, but is a very common scenario nowadays : since Internet Explorer refuses to die and I, developer, consider that more than 80% of the users around the world don’t know how to use their browsers, I wish that the wrapper somehow detect if someone’s IE doesn’t permit add-ons being started in “safe-mode”. I used quotes with safe-mode since there is no safe mode of using IE – start using FireFox now!
- #4. Access to the garbage collection please! Not only in the debugger. For the developers who really knows what are they doing – and I promise to became one soon after this feature is released – I know that this will be like getting hands on their own objects, feeling close to God and C++
Observation : I agree with the wish list (including some comments) published here.
B. Wishes for Flex SDK – this is really short
- #1. A better RichTextEditor – my guess is that it is still limited due to the sandbox, which makes the developer upload the picture before we can insert it into an RichTextEditor (with a custom control, of course). Using XHTML?
- #2. Page-able collections – in a more elegant manner than today.
Observation : I wish (for myself) to design applications which makes better use of the Model from the MVC – I’ll get back to this idea in a future post. The list for the SDK is short for a simple reason : we develop! Therefore, this wish list is constantly checked and rewritten.
C. Wishes for Flex Builder
- #1. internationalization helper tool – you select an STR_ID and call through a shortcut a wizard which inserts the same STR_ID into properties files (you’ve had let system know about) letting you complete the string after equal in all properties files;
- #2. test area – which lets you test a project (even a chunk of code), without create new project, without having to define a lot of stuff to see the Flex code running (generally, it will be used for taking a bug out of the system and treat it, or for optimization purposes – when you copy-paste a chunk of your code).
- #3. the coder has this area where he can collect all sort of tests in snippets and even in bug-solving collections which can be submitted to his personal blog or to a community site…
- #4. command line parameters wizard : every time I want to do something (complex?) with the command line I’ll have to check an external source for parameters (and I guess is not hard to build)
Among this list I should have written about documentation and samples. The great mistake about documentation is the manner in which it is organized. First, I wish there was a TextInput which filters a list of class names (I scroll to much and I’m getting tired, eventually bored and start looking somewhere else). Second, I wish there was a map (like cheat sheets has), made in Flex, in which you can go inside component methods and properties – lets say using the SpringGraph. Also, I’m imagining the day that documentation will talk about technique (and I’m not referring only Flex, but most of the good languages) – I agree, that’s the role of community and this is how you can find good inspirational websites, which explain “how you should do it!” with a bit of “why this way”.
I will get back on this subject, mostly with wishes for the SDK.
