Adobe Devnet has a security advisory on the upcoming Flash Player 9 update. The advisory lists a few very important changes to the security model in Flash Player which can possibly impact your existing Flex and Flash applications. The changes are primarily to address the vulnerabilities of the earlier versions of Flash Player (9,0,115,0 and before).

There are four key changes that can possibly impact existing applications:

• A socket policy file will always be required for all socket connections
• A policy file will be required to send headers across domains (This will possibly affect some of the Flex apps that I work with)
• The allowScriptAccess default will always be "sameDomain"
• "javascript:" URLs will be prohibited in networking APIs, except getURL(), navigateToURL(), and HTML-enabled text fields

» Continue reading "Important Flash Player Security Update - Check your applications"

Today I wanted to give ColdFusion 8 debugging a try.

So, I started followed the instructions on how to setup the enviornment for debugging. After installing ColdFusion 8 extensions for Eclipse, I went to enable debugger in ColdFusion Administrator. The CF administrator instructs that:

You must specify this debugger port in the JVM settings of your application server, for example: -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=5005, and restart the server.

If I was using JRun, I know that these options can be added in the jvm.config file.

But as I use JBoss, it took me little bit to figure out where I need to make these changes.

» Continue reading "Setting JVM options on JBoss for ColdFusion 8 debugging"

The next version of IntelliJ IDEA-- 7.0.3 -- will have built-in support for Flex development.

Among other things, it will support:

• Smart code completion for MXML and AS files, with cross-resolution of code symbols between them, even inside of mx:Script blocks and attribute values
• Automatic code formatting, highlighting and styling
• On-the-fly code validation with instant quick-fixes
• Search for perfomance bottlenecks, bad code practices
• Refactoring

Here is a tutorial using IntelliJ IDEAfor Flex development. You'll need to sign up for the early release program of JetBrains to get the beta of IDEA7.0.3.

» Continue reading "Flex Builder alternative -- IntellJ IDEA 7.0.3"

Over the past few days I've been searching for a Eclipse/Flex Builder plugin that would let me trim the unnecessary spaces left at the end of lines in the code that I work on.

I found a very nice extension called AnyEdit that performs the task of trimming extra space very well. I've been using it for a few hours now and it's worked very nicely.

AnyEdit can trim trailing spaces on any text-based file type editable in Eclipse/Flex Builder

Another task that the script performs very well is the ability to convert tabs in to spaces (and vice versa).

It also has some other nice features, like case conversion, chars to HTML entity conversion, etc.

You can download the extension from the AnyEdit site.

It's a must-have.

Found this wonderful TODO/FIXME extension for Flex Builder today that shows TODO/FIXME tasks in the Tasks view -- much like what one gets in the Java perspective.

Prior to using this extension, I was leaving all kinds of visual and searchable markers in the code so that I could search for them at a later point of time to finish off tasks or fix issues. But with this extension all that will be a thing of the past!

Thanks to Dirk Eismann for this wonderful extension.

Today I was working on refactoring code of a large Flex application.

Many files contained lots of imports at the top. I was looking for a quick way to organize my imports.

I did vaguely remember that there was on an option somewhere to organize the imports, but couldn't remember where to find it! Did all my right-clicks etc., but just couldnt' see it. I was almost about to move on, but then I found it!

In Flex Builder, click on Source > Organize Imports to organize imports alphabetically.

Even better, there is shortcut keys for it organizing imports.

On Windows: CTRL + Shift + o

On Mac: Apple + Shift + o.

Keep in mind that that imports can only be organized in this manner in Actionscript files only. (This will not work in MXML files.)

But overall, it works beautifully.