Just read through the overview and the new FlexUnit4 alpha is looking pretty good. Using meta tags to create Tests and Suites and the addition of user defined tags, makes me think that I have to start including this in my own project workflow. I wonder how many Actionscripters actually use Unit tests. I'm sure there are a lot of Enterprise Flex developers but any pure Actionscripter takers?

[Update: Updated the link to FlexUnit]

Looks like my XSD4MXML tutorial post was like so 1999 'cause the boys over at FDT delivered the beta release 3.2 with MXML support the 13th of March already. I can't keep up these days. What are you waiting for? Get it now! 

For those of you who want to get some MXML support in FDT I thought I'd share this little tutorial. I can't take credit for this as it was the guys from FDT who pointed this out at recent visit to LFPUG and Adobe MAX Milano way back in 2008. Lets hope we get FDT to support MXML natively so this isn't required but until then here goes. A small caveat, this will probably not work in Flex 4 as I remember them removing the mx namespace for the framework.

I'm currently working on a project of which the source will be distributed across the globe. So I want my code to be nice and tidy and send over some HTML docs to show off. Only problem is it's a Flex project and I've been out of touch with Flex for a while. As I don't use Flex Builder, getting ASDoc to work ended up on the things-I-will-sort-out-later-pile. For this project however, it was a requirement. So no easy way out.

Omniture is one of the leading analytic vendors out there. Chances are that if you're an Actionscripter you will come across implementing Omniture tracking on one of your projects. I briefly overviewed various tracking in a previous post but thought it might be useful to cover this vendor in-depth. Usually this level of tracking implementation are done on medium to larger flash projects or where the project is part of an online campaign. Smaller sites often don't require this level of tracking and a straight forward implementation of Google Analytics should suffice.

Omniture like many others use Javascript to make requests to a server, passing key-value pairs, to record user activity. Omniture also has a Flash component called ActionSource for more advanced tracking. This post will focus on the ActionSource component and the Omniture setup in general. If you require more information on the Javascript implementation, please read my previous post.

This article should provide you with all the ammo you need when using the Embed meta tag. It is a vital part of AS3 and should greatly enhance the structure of your projects. Hopefully this article will show the benefits of structuring your projects in this way.

I stumbled upon this gem in the Flex API about the intensity of the setStyle() method on processing. I only recently had the need to use it and was quite shocked at how slow this actually was. Granted I used it on a Datagrid which is probably not the best idea but I'm a bit of a if-it's there-then-use-it-kinda-guy.

Joan Lafferty blogged about the upcoming changes in Moxie for setting component and sub-component styles. Very insightful article. It immediately made me ask the question. How does this impact the setStyle() method. Presumably the "StyleProxy" should alleviate this problem as you have more control over what style is set to what component, regardless of the hieracrhy.

See the warning in the Flex api here »