I found some time to give my timer a small graphical rebrush. The application icon and the logo itself has been updated. Now it looks a lot more beautiful in the dock. I also added an alternative bright skin in case you don’t like the dark one. The calender is now zoomable if you didn’t already noticed and timers running less than 60 seconds are not counted anymore. The next thing I’m planning is to write an importer/exporter for the database that let’s you easily migrate all your timer data to a new computer. So long…

Good news everyone! I just released the first version of my new time tracking application. You can find the download, description and everyting else under Projects -> SimpleTimer 2. The version count is 1.0.1. I hope it’s nearly bugfree, since I’m using it for quite a while now. Let me know what you think of it!

I updated the SimpleTimer installer to the final AIR 1.0 release. You should be able to install it again ;)
Note to myself: I need time for updates and features ….

I just stumbled over SHU, a new wrapper for AIR applications. You can turn your AIR app into a standalone excecutable (at least 5mb) that is able to launch other applications. Sounds interesting, but is the SHU Player able to upgrade to a new AIR version? Can I still make use of the auto update feature if everything is packed into one big standalone package? We’ll see… at the moment it sounds like a better Zinc, maybe the next AIR release will satisfy our needs ;)

One of the features that are missing in AIR, is the possibility to launch native applications. Mike Chambers now published a proof of concept how to enable this feature. He wrote a CommandProxy that is able to launch applications. The drawback is, that you have to launch the Proxy before you can launch other applications and this can only be done by the user at the moment. There is a discussion about it going on, let’s see how it will evolve…

I just updated the Timer to the latest AIR Runtime Beta 3. Download: SimpleTimer
My hack concerning right click menus in AIR has become redundant with the Beta3. Sprites now dispatch the MouseEvent.RIGHT_CLICK Event.

Since yesterday, a new beta version of Flashdevelop is available. The great news is: Flashdevelop now has built in AIR project templates and Flex3 intrinsic classes, so there is no need for my little guide anymore. Grab the newest version here: Flashdevelop Beta 5

Good news everyone! I’m proud to present the first beta of my little time tracking tool. Check it out here: SimpleTimer

Good news everyone! Since it is still a bit tricky to get Flashdevelop and AIR together, I wrote a little guide how to set it all up. I’m using FD3 Beta 2, it might be a bit different with newer versions of Flashdevelop, but it should work:

1. Download the latest Flex SDK here and unzip it in a folder of your choice. Change the Flex SDK Location in Flashdevelop to the new SDK (F9 -> AS3Context -> Flex 2 SDK Location -> C:\[PATH_TO_FLEX3SDK])
2. For real coding comfort you can set up an AIR project template: You need to copy and edit an existing template folder. Flashdevelop project templates are located in C:\Program Files\FlashDevelop\FirstRun\Templates\ProjectTemplates\.
3. Copy \06 ActionScript 3 – Default Project\ to \09 AIR – Default Project\.
4. Then copy the sample application descriptor file that comes with the Flex 3 SDK (C:\[PATH_TO_FLEX3SDK]\templates\air\application.xml) to \09 AIR – Default Project\.
5. And of course you need autocompletion: Just download the latest Flex 3 with AIR intrinsic classes and unzip them in C:\Program Files\FlashDevelop\FirstRun\Library\AS3\intrinsic\ overwriting the old ones (you might want to save them if you want to switch back to “normal” AS3 completion).
6. Start Flashdevelop and create a new AIR project. There are two more things you need to set up to get your project working:
7. In the project properties, go to ‘Compiler Options’ and add the additional compiler option: +configname=air
8. Go to ‘Build’ and add the post-build command line: ‘C:\[PATH_TO_FLEX3SDK]\bin\adl.exe’ application.xml
9. Edit the application.xml and point to your start.swf or mxml in the xml node content (in initialWindow). You can compile and launch your application hitting F8 now.
10. Have fun developing! ;)

I was wondering, why DisplayObjects in AIR don’t support the MouseEvent.RIGHT_CLICK Event. The only way to implement a right-click-menu seemed to be a NativeMenu. But I needed only the event, not the ugly native-os-menu.

Here is the workaround: Just create a blank NativeMenu and listen for the display event.

var menu:NativeMenu = new NativeMenu();
menu.addEventListener(Event.DISPLAYING, onRightClick, false, 0, true);
someSprite.contextMenu = menu;