Development Soup

For the second night in a row I have been waiting on hold with yahoo customer support for over an hour. Although the “musak” version of “While You See a Chance” by Steve Winwood is rather uplifting, I would prefer to have my problem addressed.

I did finally get someone on the phone (1hr 12min wait) only to be placed on hold once more after explaining the issue I decided to send a bitchy email instead of waiting another millennium. Here is what I wrote, more to come…

First of all let me say that yahoo provides possibly the worst customer support I have ever experienced.
I have been unable to properly map subdomains, and have been unable to get any help, even after waiting on hold for longer than one hour.
The problem is a create a subdomain with your little wizard, and it does not map to the URL (Yes I have waited 24 hours)
If there is an actual person reading this email, by the time you read this I will have likely already switched to goDaddy or similar hosting services.
PS. this message is being posted to my blog.

Was the part about goDaddy too mean? That is pretty low I know. I just want them to hurt as much as it hurts me to listen to Kenny G for an hour after a full day of work and a night class.

Recently I was given an invite to join google grand central which is a free answering service provided by the almighty indexers of all that is important, google.com. My first impression of Grand Central was pure awe. I was given a free number which could serve essentially as a main line for all the phone numbers by which I can be reached. Grand Central has a nifty web interface which allows you to check who has called, route certain calls to specific numbers and take messages. I do think the service is rather neat, but on second glance, I wonder if it serves any real purpose. After two weeks of using the service I have not checked in to play with it again. What I really wonder is who would I actually give this number to? Is there anyone I would like to go through yet another degree of separation before being able to reach me? In the end, If I was important enough to need something like Grand Central, I would be important enough to have a receptionist.

I would love to hear about anyone else’s impression of Google Grand Central

**WARNING** This is an absolute rant!

Ok so recently I went online to purchase textbooks for school. Going between the usual suspects , half.com and Amazon.com, I decided to purchase my books from Amazon. I am sure that many of you reading have used this site and found it as wonderful as I have for its ease of use, targeted suggestions and its generally smart usability.

So a day goes by and I look in my cart to see what has processed and what has not. Both sales are normal, the one from a third party, and the book from amazon. I assume that everything is fine and go about my business. After about a week the book from the 3rd party arrives. I found it odd, because most often amazon ships faster, but I am busy person, with work, and several night classes, the book will get here eventually I assume. After 3 more days (and one class session) I am a little worried. Where is this book from amazon?! I go online to my amazon account after class and find an estimated ship date of Feb. 9th.

What!!!!? I am enraged. I start pacing, worrying, raising my voice to the computer screen. I never thought for a second that this could be possible. Not that the book is back ordered, that is perfectly understandable, but that amazon never sent an email. With all the money invested in marketing, you would think that this simple logic would be in place.

Customer A orders a textbook
therefore likely a student
therefore likely needs the book pronto
book out of stock? -> send email notification.

I called customer service and spoke to a very nice yet rather vapid young lady who told me that I would need to check back to my account to find out that the book is back ordered. In the busy day to day this is just another thing I have to remember to do that should be done for me (in my opinion).

I don’t know if its a good thing or not, but shopping online, and the web in general has made us spoiled. It is almost too good, and when a stupid thing happens on a trusted site like amazon, I can’t take it!! It makes me throw hysterical fits and preach to my wonderful wife, who just wants to watch medium in peace.

The other day I decided to write a small flex app that presents a very basic ticker message for presenting important information on a site. This example is pretty simple, and could easily be modified to include actionable links (using LinkButton instead of Label).

Here is the MXML

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" backgroundColor="#ffffff" initialize="resetText();"><mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
 
// Event handler for the effectEnd event.
private function endEffectHandler():void {
moveText();
}
 
private function moveText():void {
myMove.end();
myMove.duration=8000;
myMove.xTo=-600;
myMove.play();
 
}
 
private function resetText():void {
myMove.end();
text.x=500;
moveText();
}
 
]]>
</mx:Script>
 
<mx:Style>
 
Application {
backgroundGradientColors: #FFFFFF, #FFFFFF;
backgroundGradientAlphas: 1, 1;
vertical-align: top;
horizontal-align: center;
padding-top: 0px;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 0px;
}
 
.tickerWindow{
 
}
 
Label {
fontSize: 20px;
color: #FFFFFF;
fontFamily: Verdana;
}
</mx:Style>
 
<mx:Move id="myMove" target="{text}" effectEnd="resetText();" />
 
<mx:Panel title="Information" height="125" width="500"
paddingTop="10" paddingLeft="10" paddingRight="10" paddingBottom="10" backgroundColor="#ffffff">
 
<mx:HBox  id="tickerWindow" height="65" width="450"  borderStyle="solid" paddingTop="10" paddingBottom="10" backgroundColor="#ff0000"
paddingLeft="10" paddingRight="10" horizontalScrollPolicy="off">
 
<mx:Label y="15" id="text" text="a very extra super important message here" />
 
</mx:HBox>
 
</mx:Panel>
</mx:Application>

Today I would like to share a flex application I think may be very useful to someone. Imagine you need to generate an accordion navigation with dynamic content such as the one used on the second level of cnn’s website. You would like to be able to use the same application over without massive effort, or copying and pasting code blocks all over the place. Sure this could be done with a mountain of javascript, or you might want to consider flex. For those with experience using flex, I present the mxml file free of charge. For those without any experience with flex, you may want to read a tutorial before jumping into this example.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><mx:Application
xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns="*" xmlns:flexlib="http://code.google.com/p/flexlib/"
layout="vertical" viewSourceURL="srcview/index.html" backgroundColor="#ffffff"
creationComplete="srv.send();"<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
 
import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.utils.ArrayUtil;
[Bindable]
public var navData:ArrayCollection;
 
[Bindable]
public var index:int=-1;
 
]]>
</mx:Script>
 
<mx:Style>
Application {
backgroundGradientColors: #FFFFFF, #FFFFFF;
backgroundGradientAlphas: 1, 1;
vertical-align: top;
horizontal-align: center;
padding-top: 0px;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 0px;
}
 
VAccordion {
textRollOverColor: #FFFFFF;
textSelectedColor: #FFFFFF;
color: #FFFFFF;
headerHeight: 35;
vertical-gap: 5;
background-alpha:0;
open-duration:500;
border-style:none;
 
header-style-name: gradientHeader;
 
}
 
.gradientHeader {
 
font-family: Verdana;
cornerRadii: 10, 10, 10, 10;
borderColors: #AAB1CD, #AAB1CD;
overBorderColors: #FFFFFF, #FFFFFF;
selectedBorderColors: #FFFFFF, #FFFFFF;
borderThickness: 2;
color: #FFFFFF;
borderAlpha: 1;
fillColors: #7f8182, #7f8182;
fillAlphas: 1, 1;
fillColorRatios: 0, 255;
overFillColors: #FFFFFF, #FFFFFF;
overFillAlphas: 1, 1;
overFillColorRatios: 0, 169;
selectedFillColors:#000000, #000000;
selectedFillAlphas: 1,1;
 
fontSize: 13;
padding-left: 10px;
padding-top: 0px;
 
}
 
LinkButton {
fontSize: 10px;
rollOverColor: #fafafa;
selectionColor: #fafafa;
color: #0B357F;
textRollOverColor: #25bbfc;
textSelectedColor: #0B357F;
padding-left: 15px;
padding-top: 5px;
}
 
.headerBox {
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
}
 
.students {
padding-top: 0px;
}
 
.medical {
padding-top: 0px;
}
 
.employ {
padding-top: 0px;
}
 
.services {
padding-top: 0px;
}
 
.label {
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
}
 
VBox{
 
}
 
</mx:Style>
 
<mx:HTTPService id="srv" url="properties.xml" resultFormat="e4x" />
 
<mx:XMLListCollection id="headingData" source="{srv.lastResult.heading}" />
<mx:XMLListCollection id="linksData" source="{srv.lastResult.heading.link.@linkname}" />
 
<flexlib:VAccordion id="accordion" headerRenderer="Header" width="238" height="230" >
 
<mx:Repeater id="rep" dataProvider="{headingData}">
<mx:VBox label="{rep.currentItem.@title}" styleName="headerBox"  backgroundColor="#fafafa" width="{rep.currentItem.@width}" height="{rep.currentItem.@height}">
 
<mx:Repeater id="linkrep" dataProvider="{rep.currentItem.link}">
<mx:LinkButton buttonDown="navigateToURL(new URLRequest(event.currentTarget.getRepeaterItem()), '_top')"  label="{linksData.getItemAt(index+=1)}" />
</mx:Repeater>
 
</mx:VBox>
</mx:Repeater>
 
</flexlib:VAccordion>
 
</mx:Application>

What this application does is loads data from an XML properties file containing the titles for the headers, the names for the links, and the URLs. I think the example is pretty straight forward.

To compile this you will need the flexlib.swf added to your flex/frameworks/libs folder as well as the header.mxml file which is used to allow the accordion to activate on mouse-over. The header.mxml file was found on http://dougmccune.com although the exact post escapes me now.

Here is the result

http://www.dreamwagon.com/flex/examples/accordion/

The xml properties file is herehttp://www.dreamwagon.com/flex/examples/accordion/properties.xmlThe source file can be copied from above or downloaded

http://www.dreamwagon.com/flex/examples/accordion/AccordionNavigation.mxml

and the header http://www.dreamwagon.com/flex/examples/accordion/Header.mxml

And finally the flexlib can be found here

http://code.google.com/p/flexlib/downloads/list

Of course you may take out the reference to the header and to the flexlib and complile the AccordionNavigation.mxml alone if you like.

Happy Flexing!