“it could be bunnies”

With the recent release of FlexBuilder 3 I have been trying to work through some of the instructions for customizing the LiveCycle Workspace using FlexBuilder 3 instead of FlexBuilder 2 (if that works we don’t need to include FlexBuilder 2 in the software for the Adobe TechU). I didn’t expect too many problems because according to Customizing the LiveCycle® Workspace ES User Interface Flex SDK 2.0.1 is supported and you can pick that SDK version in FlexBuilder 3. And for the most part it did the work. The only problem I ran into was compiling the localization swf file. According to the instructions that compilation should work with the following command:

compc -locale=es -output=export/es/workspace_rb.swc -source-path
./es "C:/program files/adobe/flex builder 2/flex sdk 2/frameworks/locale/"
-include-resource-bundles alc_wks_client_msg alc_wks_client_trace
alc_wks_client_ui SharedResources collections controls core data effects
formatters logging messaging rpc skins states styles utils validators --

Now with FlexBuilder 3 this didn’t work because some of the paths to the SDK are different. With the correct paths the compile command becomes:

"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\2.0.1\bin\compc" -locale=es
  -output=spanish/workspace_rb.swc -source-path ./spanish
  "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\2.0.1\frameworks\locale"
  -include-resource-bundles alc_wks_client_msg alc_wks_client_trace
  alc_wks_client_ui SharedResources collections controls core data
  effects formatters logging messaging rpc skins states styles utils
  validators --

This didn’t compile in FlexBuilder 3 because the data properties file couldn’t be found. That is supposedly an easy fix: just copy the data.properties file from wherever FlexBuilder 2 got it to the project path in FlexBuilder 3. Only I couldn’t find a data.properties file anywhere in FlexBuilder 2. And while removing data from the compile command solved the compile time problem, it did result in a totally unacceptable runtime error. So in the end I just created my own data.properties file with the following data:

# Dummy data.properties file
foo=bar

With this file in the same directory as the localized files the compilation ran correctly and I haven’t received any runtime errors yet. It is quite likely I will get them at some point when the Workspace wants to present some message that is supposed to be in data.properties, but I think this will do until the next LiveCycle release that I expect to add support for FlexBuilder 3.

Today was the start of the Adobe LiveCycle Technical U training program. This is a 3 week training specifically for Adobe partners on LiveCycle and Flex. The following is the set of other training courses that is combined into this one:

• Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications
• Flex 3: Data and Communications
• Flex 3: Programming the Visual Experience
• LiveCycle: Designing Forms
• LiveCycle: Building Applications

Yes, that is not a typo, we are actually covering Flex 3 in this training. This is one of the test runs with the beta courseware. But wait, there is more. Apart from bundling those 5 existing courses, there is also 6 days of additional, new material:

• custom LiveCycle content (topics include database connectivity, LDAP, email etc.)
• custom Flex content (Cairngorn)
• LiveCycle and Flex integration
• a 3-day ‘build a real application’ labs session

Since this is a newly developed training it will be given by a team of people from Adobe Training and from Prisma IT and it will be extensively reviewed. For now we just had the introductions and one of my coworkers started on the Flex content, but next week I will be delivering the LiveCycle bits of the training (including the JDBC and LDAP chapters I wrote myself). The last week will be given by my boss and the people from Adobe.