I was having some problems embedding fonts for buttons earlier today. It simply wasn't working, even if i had the font embedded correctly.
I happened upon this blog post, which shares... that for buttons you MUST have font weight set to normal. If the font weight isn't set to normal, the font will not show correctly in the button. Yes, it will work for everything else....just not buttons. Also, yes...I don't get it.

Cheers

For quite some time, I've been wanting to write a blog post about the state of the technology job market as I see it. From my perspective as a senior developer, recruiters have a stranglehold on much of the job market. To me, the majority of them are right between a used car salesman and a real estate agent. They are quite often hurried, uninformed and many times downright rude. When I am being placed in a job I want the person placing me to be concerned about the ultimate fit between the company and myself. In many cases, I feel the exact opposite from these recruiters. They will lie through their teeth about 'the absolute highest rate' that they can offer. In some cases I've had three different people from the same recruitment company call and pitch me the same job at different rates, all claiming that it is the most they can offer.

This concerns me, in that...as a more senior developer I have what's considered on the high end of salaries or freelance rates. With the shady practices I've seen tech recruiters exhibit, It is no doubt that in this economy they are more likely to pitch junior developers who come to them with lower rates, rather than the person who's right for the job. Faced with no other options the companies will take these junior applicants, and pay senior rates for them while the recruitment firm walks away with a much larger profit. Meanwhile, senior developers are faced with the decision to either give the recruiters the cut they want, or hold out and face possible unemployment. I would hope that most companies realize that if their prospective employees are being lied to, they are also being lied to. They should also realize that the vast majority of these recruiters are no more qualified than their ten year old son to recruit technology candidates. With a little more work on their behalves they could forgo the shady practices of many of these recruiters, and the staggering fees that are charged (especially for salaried employees this can be up to 20% of the first years salary), and most assuredly find higher quality candidates.

This post is by no means meant to paint EVERY recruiter as terrible, considering that I have run across a few that have seemed honest, diligent and focused on placing candidates based on skill and not based on how much they will make them. I am simply stating that in many cases, the process as it is now seems to hinder the process of finding a job.

If any of you have similar concerns, or experience ... or disagree with me please feel free to share below.

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The MLB.TV player that we have been working on has been in public beta now for a few days and is looking really good, check out some of the screen shots from the player.

Also here to read a little more about it.

And it just got written up here on O'reilly

And is mentioned here

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in the O'reilly podcast.

Other Links:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mlb-turning-on-near-hd-streaming-dvr-for-todays-us-canada-game-2009-3

http://www.businessinsider.com/baseballs-new-mlbtv-player-launches-looks-pretty-good-2009-3

Things are getting pretty exciting here at MLB.com as we are nearing the end of development of the new MLB.TV Media Player. It is 4:30 in the morning and all the devs are here in the MLB offices in Chelsea to launch the PUBLIC BETA for the first game of the World Baseball Classic.

That's it folks! The player is officially in the wild! You can check out the launch page here. If you're up at this crazy hour like we are, the link to the opening Japan vs. China game is at the bottom.

I'm not posting how to do it for list, as that's not what i was working on - but it should be fairly straight forward and should use very similar (if not the same code).

 
override public function scrollToIndex(index:int):Boolean{
//super.scrollToIndex(index);
var newVPos:int;
var newHPos:int;
 
var firstIndex:int = scrollPositionToIndex(horizontalScrollPosition, verticalScrollPosition);
var numItemsVisible:int = ((listItems.length - offscreenExtraRowsTop - offscreenExtraRowsBottom) *
(listItems[0].length - offscreenExtraColumnsLeft - offscreenExtraColumnsRight));
if (index >= firstIndex + numItemsVisible || index < firstIndex)
{
newVPos = Math.min(indexToRow(index), maxVerticalScrollPosition);
newHPos = Math.min(indexToColumn(index), maxHorizontalScrollPosition);
 
try
{
iterator.seek(CursorBookmark.FIRST, scrollPositionToIndex(horizontalScrollPosition, verticalScrollPosition));
//super.horizontalScrollPosition = newHPos;
//super.verticalScrollPosition = newVPos;
 
var p:Parallel = new Parallel(this);
var ap:AnimateProperty = new AnimateProperty(this);
var ap2:AnimateProperty = new AnimateProperty(this);
ap.property = 'verticalScrollPosition';
ap2.property = 'horizontalScrollPosition';
 
ap.toValue = newVPos;
ap2.toValue = newHPos;
 
p.addChild(ap);
p.addChild(ap2);
 
p.play();
 
}
catch(e:ItemPendingError)
{
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
 

NEW VERSION OF COMPONENT RELEASED HERE

This is a project that I released a while ago when i was keeping the blog at blog.3r1c.net. I've since expanded and want to release it again, as I know people used it, and they may have lost the source.
This component allows you to flow child containers logically in a vertical or horizontal manner. Try to click the buttons inside the container, and watch how they animate to a larger size, and the rest of the items flow gracefully. In the following demo you can also adjust the vertical scroll position, horizontal scroll position, width and height of the container on the fly, and watch all of the children dynamically update.

Here is the source
and
Here is the demo

Feel free to use this in any project you want, but if you do gimme a link in here cuz I'd love to see it in the wild!

Thanks again and feel free to leave comments

Eric

New York Times posted a great article about the player we've been diligently working on.  You can read it HERE.

Please tell me if there is a better way to do this, as this is both a bit convolluted, complicated, and subject to change at any time. It also requires you to use two excluded classes, and an mx_internal variable. That being said, this is how I approached it.

        import mx.core.mx_internal;
	import mx.managers.PopUpManagerImpl;
	import mx.core.Singleton

	use namespace mx_internal;

       PopUpManagerImpl(Singleton.getInstance("mx.managers::IPopUpManager")).mx_internal::modalWindowClass = SomeClass;

Please note that you have to import and use mx_internal. You also have to import PopUpManagerImpl, as this is where the variable is defined. And you must also import Singleton, which is how the flex framework accesses singleton implementations within the framework. Once you've done this, you can access the 'modalWindowClass' mx_internal property on PopUpManagerImpl, and set it to your own modal class. When this is done, anytime you add a pop up, the modal blocker will use this class.

Any questions, or SUGGESTIONS on how to do this better, please comment below

Mike Chambers has released an app for the iphone that lets you search the language reference for Flex // AIR // Actionscript 3.  As I use these all the time it's really awesome to have them at the tip of my fingers, literally.

Read about it and download it HERE