It almost feels like dejavu. This time last year, we were hard at working finishing up Ultimate. Spark datagrid was very primitive at the time (and compared to Ultimate, still is). However, there has been significant progress in terms of feature parity with MX, and although not quite there yet, it certainly is on its way. The time was right for us to jump in and add a little bit of our Flexicious Sparkle  to the Spark DataGrid :-)

So, with no further ado, presenting... the all new.. Flexicious SPARK datagrid extension!! Check out the demo here.

With the addition of this new product, we're changing our pricing a little bit, in that we're eliminating the USD 299 option. It was very small percentage of our sales anyway. Now, for USD 799.99 you get all five of our products - Classic, Advanced, Spark, Ultimate, and SQLEDT.  You can purchase unlimited domains, and the entire Flexicious source code as add-ons as well. This opens up the opportunity for our Single Developer customers to have access to unlimited domains/source, something a lot of you have asked for.

For existing customers, there is an option to add the new Spark DataGrid Extension to your product portfolio by paying the difference, just use the request quote form.

As will be obvious from the previous post, 2.6 sees the release of a new product, the Flexicious Spark DataGrid Extension. If you are interested in adding this product to your license, please read this. There has been some reorganization of the codebase to account for the requirements of the Spark DataGrid, some of these are interface changes documented below. However, there have been many enhancements, a brand new feature (Row Spans and Columns Spans), numerous bug fixes, and performance improvements for Ultimate, and quite a few for Classic as well. We have been hard at work, and are continuing at a feverish pace with new features, new products, performance improvements.

We will be sending out subscription renewal notices moving forward. PLEASE, renew your subscription in time. We hate it when support is delayed because of an expired subscription that  needs to be renewed. We pride ourselves in providing accurate and timely support. We want you to have access to help whenever you need it, so please renew in time. This enforces your commitment to the product and energizes our drive to add new features and improve existing ones.

Enhancement, Ultimate: Added rowSpanFunction and colSpanFunction. Added RowSpanExample and colSpanExample to demonsrate the new row and column span functionality.

New Example, Row Span and Col Span - Newly added example to demonstrate the row and column span abilities of Flexicious Ultimate

New Example, Remoting Backend - Ultimate working with a live backend, similar to the Classic Examples, with filterPageSortMode=server and one page of data loaded at any given time.

New Example, Trader View - Ultimate demonstrating how to quickly update the values of a specific cell, without causing a grid rebuild. This enables you to process high frequency updates from the backend.

New Example, Selection Options : Demonstration of the new Selection Exclusion mechanism (See blog post)

Enhancement, Ultimate: Added the getRowHeightFunction, which can be used to override the built in row height calculation functionality when variableRowHeight=true

Enhancement, Ultimate: Added enableSelectionexclusion

Enhancement, Ultimate: Added code so that if enableSelectionCascade, on lazy load setChildData call, automatically add to children next level selected objects

Enhancement, Ultimate: Added code so that if enableDynamicLevels=true, on lazy load setChildData call, automatically add next level if the current objects children have more children.

Enhancement, Classic and Ultimate: Added the properties filterCompareFunction and filterConverterFunction to convert data prior to filter comparision. See the XMLData example for details.

Enhancement, Classic and Ultimate: Added dateFormatString to DateComboBox to control the date format of the Custom date range popup. You can instantiate this on the column via: filterRenderer="{UIUtils.createRenderer(DateComboBox,{dateFormatString:'DD/MM/YYYY'})}"

Bug Fix, Classic : Fix for issue of preference persistence of grouped columns.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Scenarios where there are editable cells widely spaced apart,  tabbing results in NPE.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Nested Data with level renderers and variable row height did not size correctly.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : When data is added dynamically to a previously drawn grid, some cells showed up empty even when there was text to show.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Refresh operations, like sorting, rebuilding, expand collapse caused some cells to loose formatting information, and icon state.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Footer Cells did not update on filter.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Cells with a custom cellTextColorFunction defined did not retain color post scrolling.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Under certain circumstances, vertical gridlines did not extend all the way down to the grid, or post resize, did not retract back into the grids viewport.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Expand Collapse operations that happened in conjunction with the scrollbar appearing or disappearing resulted in weird state.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Edit row highlight did not disappear until mouse over on another row.

Enhancement, Ultimate : variableRowHeight – for items where word wrap did not apply (text not long enough) we did not respect the rowHeight.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Item being edited, cell text showed through item editor. Cell text will now be hidden.

Enhancement, Ultimate Automation: Added support for automation of CheckBox Click Events

Enhancement, Ultimate Automation: Added support for Level Renderer Cell Automation

Bug Fix, Ultimate : RowDisabledFunction was being ignored, and such rows were participating in hover, selection and drag. This will now be prevented. Disabled Cells will not be editable, hoverable, selectable or draggable.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Clicking checkbox header sometimes caused the rows to collapse.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Re-position the no-data message on grid resize.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Support for filterCompareFunction on Ultimate did not work.

Default Changed : The enableSelectionCascade now defaults to true.

Interface Changed : Changed IExtendedDataGrid to have get and setColumn method, and getDataProvider, renamed get dataProvider to getDataProvider. This was done because the Spark Datagrid has different return types for these properties and will not match the interface.

Method renamed : Renamed the selectAll method to selectAllCheckboxes, and clearSelection to clearCheckboxSelection. This was done because the Spark DataGrid already assigns a different meaning to these methods.

Deprecated : Row Number Column. This has been deprecated, since it is not applicable for hierarchical data. Also, causing performance issues.

Deprecated : FlexDataGridColumnLevel.widthDistributionMode. This has been removed. It was never used, and its place was taken by columnWidthMode. This property is defined on the column itself.

Bug Fix, Ultimate: Print failed in certain scenarios with preferences stored. Also, fix for scenarios where the container pushes the grid body to a negative height post print, the rows were disappearing. A sanity check has been added for this.

Bug Fix, Classic: Issue with preferences not being persisted for ICustomMatchFilterControls resolved.

Added Boolean flag autoRegister to interface IFilterControl. Just add the following to your FilterInclude:

/**

 * Register with the container on creation complete

 */

public function get autoRegister():Boolean

{

      return filterControlInterface.autoRegister;

}

/**

 * @private

 */

public function set autoRegister(value:Boolean):void

{

      filterControlInterface.autoRegister = value;

}

One of the things about support for hierarchical data, is that concepts that apply to flat data become significantly difficult to conceptualize and implement. To put this in context, imagine the good old filtering functionality. With flat data, you have a set of columns, and a filter will apply to one of the columns.

With hierarchical data, this concept becomes more difficult to implement, because now you have to filter out each item that matches a filter, keeping in perspective that its ascendants or descendants may or may not match the filter. So if a child matches a filter, but the parent does not, we would take out the parent, which in essence takes out the child as well. Then you have scenarios where the parent matches, but none of the children do. Even the concept of matching requires thought, because the field being searched on might exist on the parent, but not the child or vice versa, since they could potentially be different object types and might not share the property being searched on. Whew! That was a mouthful.

Since we have to account for these scenarios, we have the following properties:

• enableRecursiveSearch: For Grouped datagrids(reusePreviousLevelColumns=true), searching on this column will cause match current item, as well as any of its children. If any children match, this item matches as well.
• enableHideIfNoChildren: Flag to control whether or not an item that has no children is filtered out or not.
• filterExcludeObjectsWithoutMatchField : By default, for hierarchical datagrids, when there is an object that does not have the property being searched for, these objects are included in the filter match. Set this flag to true to exclude such objects.

It is things like this that we consider to be the strength of Flexicious Ultimate. It’s the fact that we have already thought about scenarios like that so you don’t have to. There are literally hundreds of things like this.

That brings us to the topic of this blog post, the selection exclusion mechanism.

One of the things that we have built into the architecture of the product is the concept of lazy loaded hierarchical datagrids. Data is loaded on demand as the user scrolls (Virtual scroll) or as the item is expanded (Lazy Load, Full and Partial). This all works fine, but what do you do about selection cascade and bubble? So far, (up until 2.5) this was limited to eager loaded grids, so when you check a parent, we run through and automatically select the children, i.e. add them to the selectedObjects collection. The big assumption here is that children are already loaded when you select the parent. This assumption falls flat on its face when you have lazy load or virtual scroll. In scenarios like this, you could select a row, and then expand or scroll. It will also cause performance issues if you have large datasets and you end up selecting a lot of records that cascade selection. Well, say hello to enableSelectionExclusion. From the docs:

enableSelectionExclusion: Support for selection based on exclusion. In scenarios where you have lazy loaded grids, selection cascade and select all will simply set flags on the selectionInfo object. The selectedObjects and selectedKeys no longer contain references to data that is selected. Instead, they contain the items that the user explicitly selected. unSelectedObjects will contain items that the user explicitly unselected. This helps maintain selection across very large lazy loaded datasets. When you set the enableSelectionExclusion flag to true, use the selectionInfo object to access the selection (or build a query on the server) to identify the objects user selected.

The selectionInfo object is a simple list of LevelSelectionInfo objects, which contains explicitly selected and unselected objects, which can then be used to construct a query on the server as to what the selection on the client was.

See the VirtualScrollExample for this concept in action!

With 2.5 just barely out, we've been hard at work preparing for 2.6. One of the most visible features of 2.6.... Drumroll Please...... Row Span, Col Span and Merged Cells. Once again ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of Flex, a DataGrid that supports the ability to define row and column spans.

A Picture is better than a thousand words, so we'll save the markup and discussion about the API changes for a latest post, but this was looking way too good to let it sit in the oven until the 2.6 release.

We're looking for existing customers or prospects to try out the early release for 2.6, so please feel free to reach out to us using the request trial page to and let us know if you are interested!!

Row Span:

Col Span:

Update : For those of you who are evaluating the cell merge functionality, the trial download does not contain the related demo file. While we're in the process of publishing it to the demo site as well as the trial download, you can use the test project bellow in the interim. (You will need the trial library which you can get using the Download Trial Link)

CellMerge.zip (6.34 kb)

Since the release of Ultimate in April, we’ve come a long way today, with hundreds of developers at world class organizations adopting our products for their complex data presentation and interaction needs. Since April, we have already had 4 releases, each with numerous features added. 2.5, is by far, the largest release. For those of you who have been following the Spark DataGrids’ progress you will agree that we’ve achieved a remarkable amount of functionality and power in a very short period of time.  Our focus is laser thin, and we are able to maintain a highly agile process by being in constant touch with our customers and quickly adapting to your needs. We release often, send out pre-release builds (you can request the latest stable build anytime),  and use customer feedback to shape our product. It’s a interactive dialogue, it has made our product enormously more powerful and precise in terms of meeting the requirements of LOB application developers.

Presenting, Flexicious 2.5

New Feature, Ultimate : Virtual Scroll (blog post here)

New Feature, Ultimate : External Filters. Each level now exposes a property called filterFunction, which can be a callback tied to a separate filtering panel. Added example ExternalFilter to demonstrate this.

New Feature, Ultimate : Decoupled and Highly configurable Disclosure Icons. Added propreties enableDefaultDisclosureIconAdded, enableExpandCollapseIcon, enableLabelAndCheckBox. Added style properties expandCollapseIconLeft/Right/Top/Bottom,   SelectionUI1 and SelectionUI2 examples to demonstrate this.

New Feature, Ultimate : Built in change tracking. Added propreties enableTrackChanges, changes, and method trackChange. If set to true, each addition, update(via the grid) or deletion to the data provider will be tracked in the changes. Added the ChangeTrackingAPI example to demonstrate this functionality

New Feature, Ultimate : Split headers for MultiColumnSort, added ability to define the number of sort dropdowns in the MultiColumnSort popup. multiColumnSortNumberFields. Extended multi column sort to inner levels for nested grids.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added the showMessage function, which will show the spinner without the wheel and display the message. This is utilized by the enableNoDataMessage, which will show a text like “No Records Found” when a zero length data provider is set, or when filter results in nothing.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added the built in support for autorefresh. Added properties enableAutoRefresh, lastAutoRefresh, autorefreshInterval and autoRefresh event to support this feature.

Enhancement, Classic And Ultimate : Enabled Automation support for all our products. Some of our customers have been using the Automation support that we started providing earlier this year. With 2.5, we are making this a part of the official build. We have also added examples for FlexMonkey and QTP, blog post here:

Enhancement, Classic And Ultimate : Updated preference persistence mechanism to support column groups

Enhancement, Classic And Ultimate : Updated printing mechanism to support Column groups

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added keyboard support for Page Up, Page Down,  Home, End, CTRL + SHIFT LEFT/RIGHT/UP/DOWN, F2 Keys

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added editable flag at the grid level, similar to Flex SDK datagrids. Setting editable on the grid is necessary to enable edit

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added the expandChildrenOf method, and the editedItemPosition method, for consistency with the SDK ADG

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added the columnGroupCellRenderer property, to provide ability to customize the container cells for column groups.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Moved the cellBackgroundColorFunction and the cellTextColorFunction on to the grid, so now you can control the background and text colors of any cell, including the chrome(header,footer,filter,pager,level renderer,column group) cells

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added the enableRecursiveSearch, enableHideIfNoChildren properties. For grouped datagrids, this will search each level for matching criteria, and automatically hide those parents that do not have any children that match the search criteria. Also the default behavior of the grid is to automatically add records that do not have the field being search on. This is especially applicable to grouped datagrids where the parent may not have all the fields being searched on. We added a property, filterExcludeItemWithoutMatchField that will prevent these items from showing up. Also, added globalFilterMatchFunction, a function to control all the filtering at all levels. If you specify this, all built in filtering mechanics are ignored. This allows you to have full control over filtering.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Automatic preservation of open items and selected items. If you specify a selectedKeyField that is unique across the grid, the grid will maintain the state of the dataprovider in terms of open and selected items when the data provider is refreshed. Please set the following flags to false as well: clearSelectionOnDataProviderChange, clearOpenItemsOnDataProviderChange. Also added rebuildGridOnDataProviderChange, which, when set to false will only redraw the body region when you change the dataprovider. All of these properties together make the process of runtime refresh of the dataprovider (for example, post an autorefresh or after reloading the dataprovider after save/edit) easier.

Enhancement, Classic/Ultimate : Print Preview warning message. By default, we show a red warning when the user changes the page layout or size to notify them that this does not affect the actual printout, and these settings need to be applied again on the print window. We added a showWarningMessage property to disable this message assuming you have another way of notifying the user.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added ability to highlight the currently editing row. Exposed properties enableEditrowHighlight and editItemColors style property

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added enableActiveCellHighlight, Flag to hightlight the active cell. If set to true (default) the cell under the mouse or if navigating via keyboard, the current reference cell will be highlighted with the activeCellColor style

Enhancement, Ultimate : Performance optimizations, Ultimate should render 10-15% faster. Read the performance post for details.

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added property enableSelectionBasedOnSelectedField, selectedField and method setOpenItemsBasedOnSelectedField. Flag to enable dataprovider based preselection of data. Please ensure you set selectedField at all appropriate columns levels. selectedField  is a field on the dataprovider that indicates that this item should be selected

Enhancement, Ultimate : Added timers to the icon hover over, so accidental move of the mouse over the icon and out of the tooltip does not cause it to disappear or appear unintentionally. Added the tooltipWatcherTimeout property to support this.

Bug Fix Ultimate: Excel Export of Grouped DataGrids (reusePreviousLevelColumns=true) was pushing nested levels one column in. This has now been fixed, and instead of skipping a column to emulate the hierarchy, we insert spaces so it looks like a hierarchical export.

Bug Fix, Classic/Ultimate : Fixed issue with filterComboBoxWidth not being applied to the MultiSelectComboBox dropdown.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Fixed issue with textAlign=center not working

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Fixed issue with drawing custom icons for expand collapse

Bug Fix, Classic/Ultimate : Fixed issue with AutoComplete ComboBox scrolling and row count.

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Clicking on a row did not immediately change the color, you had to hover out and hover back in

Bug Fix, Ultimate : Clicking on the fill area of the grid did not end the current edit session

Bug Fix, Classic and Ultimate : Fixed an issue with the Collection Manipulator that was causing it to fail in Flash Player 10.1 and below.

Bug Fix Ultimate: Right Click Cell Select. Intermittent Issue from Flash Player https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-31155

Bug Fix Ultimate : Paging at inner nested levels was broken, fixed

Bug Fix Ultimate : Show Hide Footers made the footer area go blank

Bug Fix Ultimate : Show hide all columns caused last column to occupy all space

Bug Fix Classic: Preference persistence would not correctly restore the order of columns

Bug Fix Classic : The halo focus rectangle on column being edited with ExtendedAdvancedDatagrid was showing one row off.

Virtual Scroll: With the release of Ultimate 2.5, we present for the first time in the history of Flex, (and most other UI technologies) Virtual Scroll with Hierarchical data. The mandate when we came up with this feature was that we would need to be able to support scrolling through potentially millions of rows of hierarchical data. Implementing Virtual Scroll for Flat Data is quite straightforward. But when you start thinking about extending the same for hierarchical data, it starts to get complicated even to think about it. Add in ability to support multi headers, footers, selection, and you have a real challenge at hand. Well, the adventurers we are, we took it on. Before you read through the how-to, jump over to the demo, scroll all the way down, and run the Virtual Scroll example to see it in action.

Below are the guidelines to implementing Virtual Scroll for your applications:

1) Define your levels, columns, etc.

2) When you set the dataProvider, ensure you set grid.totalRecords. This is the same process you would follow with filterPageSortMode=server.

3) Set enableVirtualScroll=true

4) Set itemLoadMode and filterPageSortMode=server. This is important, because virtual scroll assumes that you are scrolling through a large set of related data, and the only navigational gesture for record identification of the current viewport is the scroll position of the vertical scroll bar.

5) Set the selectedKeyField. This is also important, not from a virtual scroll perspective, but specifically where filterPageSortMode is set to server. Ultimate (and classic) expose this field, because it attempts to resolve a fundamental issue that is left unaddressed by the Flex SDK DataGrids, which is maintenance of selection and state across data refreshes. We’ve talked about this in previous blog posts, but the selectedKeyField is primarily a pointer to a property on the model objects in the dataprovider that uniquely identifies this record in the database. For example, if you are showing a list of employees, the selectedKeyField should be employeeId. This is what the grid is going to use to “remember” which records were “selected” or “open”

6) Set up the numChildrenField. This is required if you have hierarchical data. When you enable virtual scroll, the grid needs to know upfront if the item being drawn has children. This information is then used to draw the disclosure Icon. It is also used to calculate the differential in height that opening or closing a specific item will cause.

7) Wire up the virtualScroll event. This is an event of type FlexDataGridVirtualScrollEvent. This event has a property called “recordsToLoad”. This is an array that contains VirtualScrollLoadInfo records. This array basically tells you which records to load, and at what levels. For flat grids, this will be a list record indexes at the top level. But for hierarchical grids, it will depend on what items are open, how many children each item has, and where you have scrolled to. When this event is dispatched, it is dispatched with VirtualScrollLoadInfo records where the “item” property will be null. It is in this event that you will issue a server call, to fetch the corresponding “item” records on basis of the record Index (and parent for child level records). Once you fetch the records from the database, you can then populate the recordsToLoad array with the data retrieved from the server, and call the grid.setVirtualScrollData, passing in the same array that was given to you in the event.

Virtual Scroll is quite similar to paging from a backend server implementation perspective. In our regular paging examples, we provide a mechanism to show you how to implement backend that consumes a page index, page size, and filter information. You would do the same thing here, with the exception that instead of page index and page size, you will get exact record indexes. The array of Virtual Scroll Data will also optionally contain header and footer rows. From a backend implementation perspective, you’ll ignore these.

8) A few other flags that might be of interest:

a. enableDrawAsYouScroll : When you set this to true, the grid continuously dispatches the “virtualScroll” event. You should set this to true only when you have a need for this, because for the most part, you only want to dispatch the scroll when the user pauses scrolling.

b. virtualScrollDelay : The amount of time to wait before dispatching the virtualScrollEvent

Automating Flex Applications is a key aspect of Enterprise Application Development. Out of the box Flex Supports a rich Automation framework, with a plugin based Automation API mechanism that automation tools can use to perform recording and playback. There are many automation tools available in the market, including FlexMonkey by GorillaLogic, QTP by HP (Formerly Mercury). Borland SilkTest, RIATest, Selenium-Flex, etc. Most of our clients currently either use QTP or FlexMonkey.

Automation usually involves a few steps in terms of setup. The first step is to get the agent link swc embedded into the application. The agent swc is usually provided by the Vendor that makes the Automation tool. The second step is to pull in the Automation swcs for the Flexicious Classic (ClassicAutomation.swc) or Flexicious Ultimate (UltimateAutomation.swc), and link them as linked libraries. The third step is to modify the environment file, which is a custom file for each automation tool. Once this setup is complete, automation is ready for use. The name of the Automation File for FlexMonkey is FlexMonkeyENV.xml, and the one for QTP is TEAFlex.xml. Both are included in the links below.

Below, please find two links, for QTP and FlexMonkey

http://www.flexicious.com/resources/automation/AutomationFlexMonkey.zip

http://www.flexicious.com/resources/automation/AutomationQTP.zip

Flexicious is licensed on a per developer basis. For Single Domain licenses, we require the domain information (or the app name in case of AIR apps) when we create your build.

Flexicious Setup Workflow:

• You purchase Flexicious via our website.
• We send you a link to request your build
• Once this link is submitted, we generate your build, and you receive an email with the SWC and instructions on deploying the Console. Please read this carefully.
• You install the console, and request a license
• We send you the license file, which you then deploy to the console

Some Frequently asked questions:

1) What is the Flexicious Console?
a. Flexicious Console is a small AIR app that will manage your license information, show recent blog posts, notify you of current build version and latest build available.

2) I have purchased multiple developer licenses. Do each of my developers need to request a build?
a.  No, the same SWC should be used for all developers. However, each of your flex developers will need to install the Flexicious Console, and request and deploy their respective licenses. Instructions for this are in the build email.

3) When I receive an updated build (new version released, etc), do I need to reinstall the license/Flexicious Console?
a. No, the console should not be uninstalled. The console and license file deployment is a onetime process. Usually, all that needs to be done when a new build is published is to replace the old swc with the new one.

3) What should I do when my licensed domain changes?
a. Just request a new build with the appropriate domain information and mention the domain change in the notes. We will send you an updated swc with the new domain.

4) Do I need to deploy any license to the webserver/server where my air/flex app is hosted?
a. No. The licensing mechanism kicks in ONLY when the swc detects that it is running inside a Flash Debug player, with localhost or file based URLS. No licensing code executes (except the domain check for single domain customers) on non-debug players or when the browser path is not local. 

5) How is the domain licensing implemented?
a. Domain licensing : This is only applicable to Single Domain Customers. The domain is licensed when you request a build. One of the fields on the “Request A Build” page is the domain you wish to license. We usually allow upto 3 domains, assuming they are DEVELOPMENT/PROD/QA instances of the same application. This is independent of the developer licensing.

6) How does the developer licensing work?
a.  Developer Licensing : This is implemented via the usage of the console. Each developer who runs Flexicious in debug mode on localhost/file URLS  needs to have the Console installed. When you install the Flexicious Console, you should see a button to send us a license request. This captures information from your system that is used to generate the license hash. Once your request is processed, you are sent a file  with the name flexicious.license. Instructions on deployment are included in the email.

=========================================

For issues deploying the license file

1) First, ensure that your license was issued within the past 72 hours.

2) If you are running Vista +, ensure that you run as Administrator when deploying the license. You can do so via Right Click -> Run as Administrator on the Flexicious Console

3) Ensure that you are using the same user to deploy the license that you did to request it

4) If you have verified all of the above, just quit the Console, Place the license file next to the console exe (Usually C:\Program Files\FlexiciousConsole or C:\Program files (x86)\FlexiciousConsole), and then restart the console. Note to MAC users : The license file must be placed next to the swf like shown in the screenshot here

5) Restart the machine.

If none of the above work, this could indicate a corrupt license file, please reach out to our support in this scenario.

===============================================================

Issues building from the source

For those of you who are having issues compiling the library from Source (Source Customers only - Site/Enterprise), there are 2 known FYIs:

1) Known Issue compiling compilation issue with com.flexicious.nestedtreedatagrid.automation.FlexDataGridAutomationImpl

Resolution - The Automation Files have been moved out to a different Library. Please delete this file to resolve the compilation issue.

2) Unable to open Included file "../../../../../../FlexGrid/includes/StatePersistenceInclude.as"

Resolution - This error will appear if the Classic and Ultimate source files are extracted to the same level. By default, Ultimate is one level below Classic, so if you have extracted them to the same directory, just remove an extra "../". Also, you may need to change FlexGrid to ClassicLib in the path.

===============================================================

We have also run into some incompatibility issues that were introduced because Adobe changed the way they want the design.xml formatted for Flex Builder 4.5. Please bear with us while we update our build mechanism and verify compatibility to account for all the different builder vs sdk version variations being forced upon us. In the interim, what this means is the following.

If you see the following error: "Could not resolve <flxs:FlexDataGrid> to a component implementation", just replace the following in the component declaration: xmlns:flxs="http://www.flexicious.com/2011" with xmlns:flxs="com.flexicious.nestedtreedatagrid.*"

Also, if you notice that autocomplete (intellisense) is not working, you can always manually import the namespaces as such:

xmlns:flxs="com.flexicious.nestedtreedatagrid.*" (For Ultimate)

xmlns:grids="com.flexicious.grids.*"  (For Classic)

xmlns:controls="com.flexicious.controls.*" (For the extended basic controls like TextInput, MSCB)

An example import will look like (for Flex 4):

<mx:VBox xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
         xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
         xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" width="100%" height="100%"
         xmlns:nestedtreedatagrid="com.flexicious.nestedtreedatagrid.*"
         xmlns:controls="com.flexicious.controls.*"          xmlns:flxs="com.flexicious.nestedtreedatagrid.*">

For those of you compiling the Flex 3 version of the source, ensure you change the isFlex3 to true and isFlex4 to false in the compilation parameters.

=========================================

The Classic and Ultimate Libraries, out of the box, come with a series of renderers. For example, in Ultimate, when you enable MultiColumnSort, the box that comes up like below, is a default renderer. Same applies for the pager control, the Print Preview window, the Print and Export Options windows.

One of the major considerations when authoring a reusable library component is that you have to allow of ease of customization. Everything we do, every API we add, we keep this in mind. As a product that is used at hundreds of companies, the clarity of API, and ease of use in terms of extensibility is crucial to the success of our product. At the same time, we want you to be able to run with what's out of the box without any major hurdles. One of the key feedback we got from our customers is how easy it is to simply drop the swc in, change the declarations from mx:DataGrid to either grids:ExtendedDataGrid(Classic) or flxs:FlexDataGrid (Ultimate), and leverage all our features. But at the same time, say you wish to modify the built in Print Preview - or the Toolbar or the MultiColumnSort. Its' nice to know what the default one does to model your code on top of it. Usually you just reach out to support and we send these to you. But, in this post, we'd like to publish all our out of the box renderers in one place.

Renderers.zip (24.09 kb)

Some of our guests who have been evaluating Flexicious complained about the annoying Nag Dialog on item click that wont let you edit. It has been long on our TODO list to take care of that issue, and finally, we are able to provide a trial version of the library with no Nag Dialog.

But the good thing about that effort is that we now have a built in ability to show handy Toaster notifications. This is as easy as:

var toast:Toaster=new Toaster();

toast.showToaster
(message:String
,toasterPosition:String=POSITION_BOTTOM_RIGHT
,toasterRenderer:IFactory=null
,animationDuration:Number=1000
,visibleDuration:Number=5000
,moveAnimate:Boolean=true
,fadeAnimate:Boolean=true
)


There is a default renderer that is used, but you can easily provide your own renderer. The default renderer is attached for you to modify to suit your needs!

Happy Toasting!!

Sample Toaster Message:

Default Renderer:

DefaultRenderer.mxml (1.08 kb)