No Design Mode in Flash Builder 4.7

It took me many hours to figure this out so I thought I would share what I discovered to make it easier on others.
1. Flash Builder 4.7 no longer has Design Mode (being able to design forms graphically). 4.6 was the last version to support it.
2. Adobe will not sell you 4.6 (or 4.5). They only sell 4.7. They suggest you find a retailer who has an old box.
3. Don't bother complaining, the word is "real programmers don't use design mode".
4. I called support yesterday to get some questions answered. I was told the wait time is over 2 hours and I can't leave a callback number. (At least at that time, they only let you leave a callback number for product returns - which I also did.)
I spent over 8 hours on this yesterday at a cost, in terms of lost revenue, of 4 figures. I hope this saves you some time.
Blake

Hi Blake,
In another page (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1056583), Adobe states that it will be possible to download 4.6 in alternative to 4.7, to still have the Design View. However, I have not seen such possibility yet.
I will not say that "real programmers don't use design mode". They do, if it works fine.
However, the Design View was not very useful for mobile projects, if you wanted to create an interface which, at run time, adapts to different screen estates.
It was very good to draw an initial mock-up, but only the simulator (and the device) can say how the app really looks like (if you want to know more, please have a look here: http://aliencoding.com/2013/02/22/adobe-flash-builder-4-7-has-no-design-view-is-it-blasphe my-no-but-the-software-contains-some-other-blasphemous-aspects/).
If you develop for desktop, then I agree the Design View lack is a real drag. I think Adobe should at least lower the price of the program, now that it's been scaled down for (I think) copyright issues (the Design mode relies on Flash professional components that was not donated to Apache).
I love this platform because it really saved my butt in cases of real fast devployment, BUT NOW it lacks support for Windows 8 that PhoneGap has...
Can we say... it is a legacy framework by now?

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Design mode in Flash Builder 4.5

I've seen from previous discussions that newer versions of Flash Builder wouldn't be supported in design mode because there would be too many SWCs to maintain, but I wanted to check if it'd be possible for the LCCS team to only support the current/active version of Flash Builder?
It wasn't too bad before because I had Flash Builder 4 on my old Macbook Pro. I recently bought a new Macbook Air, and I was trying to find Flash Builder 4 specifically for the purpose of being able to use design mode. I like being able to quickly mockup things in the design mode, and I've always been more visual personally (I still use the command line when I have to, but I'm a designer by nature and so I always prefer being able to visually layout my interface instead of code it out). I think it's a matter of preference, and I probably could switch to just using code, but I really liked the design mode.
Anyway, I don't think it'd be a problem, except I can't find any download links for Flash Builder 4. The only thing I can get is Flash Builder 4.5, and the design mode is not supported in that version. Would it be possible to find a download link (even for a trial) of Flash Builder <= 4.0?

Hi all,
Exact same problem for me as well. Can someone please help ?
Thank you !

"Design" section on Flash Builder. Where is it?

Where is the "design" section of Flash Builder?
I have the latest version 4.7 from my Adobe Cloud. One of the phone support giving me a call back couldn't connect to my computer to see my screen, and told me to download the 4.6 version instead... what??!!
I am stuck on "code" only mode in my Fb system and can't do anything. How do I find my "design" mode for Flash Builder?
Also..... The "Chat" support on Adobe doesn't seem to be working... Anybody of you is able to connect to "chat" with adobe?

Hi,
Ever since Flash Builder 4.7, they dropped Design View. That's why they told you to use Flash Builder 4.6 instead.
There are 3 Flash Builder alternatives:
The best Flash Builder alternative is FDT, but it does not support MXML Design View.
http://fdt.powerflasher.com/
The 2nd choice is IntelliJ IDEA, you can download a MXML Design View plugin, it's very cool.
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/flex_ide.html
The 3rd choice is FlashDevelop, it's free and open sourced, but it's Windows only, and it does not support MXML Design View either.
http://www.flashdevelop.org/
DarkStone
2014-12-09

Chart causing error 1009 when enabling compatibility mode in Flash Builder 4

Hello.
I'm trying to use the chart components in Flash Builder 4. I'm using Flex SDK 4, but had to turn on the "Flex 3 compatibility mode" for some off-topic reasons.
I simply created a new application and copied the code from the DateTimeAxis class example: http://www.codigoactionscript.org/langref/as3/mx/charts/DateTimeAxis.html#includeExamplesS ummary
When running the example, the following error is reported (sorry, it is in italian: it's simply the "null object" error):
TypeError: Error #1009: Impossibile accedere a una proprietà o a un metodo di un riferimento oggetto null.
at mx.charts.chartClasses::CartesianChart/updateMultipleAxesStyles()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks \projects\datavisualization\src\mx\charts\chartClasses\CartesianChart.as:2598]
at mx.charts.chartClasses::CartesianChart/commitProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\project s\datavisualization\src\mx\charts\chartClasses\CartesianChart.as:1360]
at mx.core::UIComponent/validateProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framework\src\ mx\core\UIComponent.as:7772]
at mx.managers::LayoutManager/validateProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framewor k\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:572]
at mx.managers::LayoutManager/doPhasedInstantiation()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\frame work\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:700]
at mx.managers::LayoutManager/doPhasedInstantiationCallback()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projec ts\framework\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:1072]
Is there a solution to this bug? We really need to use charts AND keep the Flex 3 compatibility mode.

I use SDK 4.1 but I also get the error: (Flashbuilder 4.0.1 in Flex 3 compatibility mode)
TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
    at mx.charts.chartClasses::CartesianChart/updateMultipleAxesStyles()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks \projects\datavisualization\src\mx\charts\chartClasses\CartesianChart.as:2598]
    at mx.charts.chartClasses::CartesianChart/commitProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\project s\datavisualization\src\mx\charts\chartClasses\CartesianChart.as:1360]
    at mx.core::UIComponent/validateProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framework\src\ mx\core\UIComponent.as:7772]
    at mx.managers::LayoutManager/validateProperties()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\framewor k\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:572]
    at mx.managers::LayoutManager/doPhasedInstantiation()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projects\frame work\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:700]
    at mx.managers::LayoutManager/doPhasedInstantiationCallback()[E:\dev\4.0.0\frameworks\projec ts\framework\src\mx\managers\LayoutManager.as:1072]
So I guess it is not solved....
regards,

How does one access MX components -- e.g. DataGrid -- in Design View in Flash Builder Burrito

Hi,
Is there a way to access the mx version of components in Design View (Flash Builder Burrito), for those components that have both a Spark and a Halo/MX version, e.g. DataGrid?
Thanks

... I know I can go to Source View and type in part of it, and switch to design view, however I'm doing a bunch of tutorials where the mx components are used, where one is simply dropping data services onto the components, apparently not supported yet on the newer Spark components?

Linux Design mode in Flex Builder?

Is it available?
thanks

Hey,
Have you tried the solution posted in this thread? http://forums.adobe.com/message/2736010

Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP - show variable from PHP in app

I have searched for hours and I can't figure this out…
Is there a way to somehow "echo" my PHP code in my MXML file ?
I know you can't echo something from PHP to MXML, so here's what I have done :
I get my informations from my database, I need to show an image and its title, so I put the following code in a variable :
<mx:Image id="laniraBlanche" x="25" y="65" width="210" height="126" source="'.$row->image_mini.'" click="selectLaniraBlanche()" rollOver="seePicture()" rollOut="outPicture()" /> <s:Label x="25" y="155.85" text="'.$row->nom.'" width="210" textAlign="center" height="37" fontSize="19" backgroundColor="#676666" verticalAlign="middle" fontFamily="Georgia" color="#FFFFFF" click="selectLaniraBlanche()" rollOver="seePicture()" id="laniraBlancheTxt" rollOut="outPicture()" />'
Then, I return that variable.
I find the function where my var created is returned from the "Data/Service" tab, I am on Design mode on Flash Builder, and I "drop" my function where I want my image and text to show on my app.
I tryed dropping it in a "group", it doesn't show anything. I tryed several other options, and nothing worked.
So my question is, how could I have this code created in PHP show on my application ?
Thank you for your help

I also have Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP and the ANT view does not show when going to Window -> Show View --> Other. I could not find it in any of the folders.
However, I was able to add it by hitting Command 3 (CTRL 3 on PC) and typing Ant.

Design mode could not load ... It may be incompatible...:FB4 Beta 2 and Flex SDK 4.1

Hello,
ever since I upgraded to the latest nightly builds about two weeks ago (SDK 4.1) I get the error mentioned above, and the design mode of Flash Builder 4 Beta 2 doesn't work any more:
Design mode could not load he.enwipe.core.swc. It may be incompatible with this SDK, or invalid. (DesignAssetLoader.CompleteTimeout)
Design mode could not load PureMVC_AS3_MultiCore_1_0_5.swc. It may be incompatible with this SDK, or invalid. (DesignAssetLoader.CompleteTimeout)
and also all other "swc" inside my project that do not come directly from the SDK or Flash Builder.
Any ideas what could be the cause?

Hi,
Did you switch your projects build option to merge into code rather than have runtime libraries generated.
David.
[edit'] I really should sleep a bit more- I miss read the question, but you will probably need to break down your project to see what the issue is mxml by mxml, one thing is that any mxml headers need to halo name space renamed to mx.
as below -
xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"

Flash Builder 4 - design view - states basedOn + design area widget

Hello,
Since i updated my project from Flex 3 to Flash Builder (4), i have very annoying issues in the design area.
The one in Flex 3 was quite usefull, but the new version is not easy, and straight forward usable.
Here are the 3 issues:
- when i have states designed from another one, i use the basedOn mxml attribute, which was used in Flex 3 and still exist in SDK 4 states system.
But the designer view in Flash Builder don't take those basedOn properties in account!
What can i do? and is it a known bug?
- When i have at least one precific state, i must define a defautl state, in the new SDK. Ok, but in design view, i cant add a new component without making the change only for one state. I can only make the change for the default state, but it will not be taken in account for all the other states, like i can do in Flex 3.
What i want to be able to do this: making changes in design view without selecting ANY state.
Is it possible? How can i do?
- In flex 3, there were a design area widget to select the resolution used for the preview design.
It was very usefull when the application has very dynamic width and height.
In Flash Builder, this widget has been removed.
Why has it been removed? and how can i preview my mxml views wihtout changing width and height values?
Thanks.
Seb

The update has been improved in every other areas, so it is not that much important.
I just hope that the new release will fix that (as it has been answered to my post).
The only thing i don't like in new releases of FB is that when the architecture of SDK is aimed to seperate the work between design and code, they focused only on catalyst to create the tools to manipulate design, and they forgot to keep an easy way to do design app directly in FB (with the design view and the style properties of MXML in FB3). But i'm confident that they will give such a tool soon.
But for now, if you don't like the restriction of the new release, you can continue to work with Flex 3 for 0$! And even in Flex 4, you can create MX components for which the design view will work as before. The fact that tools can manage a mix between MX and Spark components is a great thing. It is up to you to choose which you need which its own advantages and drawbacks.
Xcode is real pain to use with outdated ergonomy. It is only usefull to code in Objective C which is another real pain to do.
XCode can be cheapper because all Apple products are quite expansive, so the software to create softwares for them can be much more cheapper.
And Apple get a good revenue share from AppStore, so again they can give a cheap soft to create apps. You also have to pay 100$ to be able to send app to appstore, in ly opinion the good price for XCode should be 0$, not even 80$!
Flash builder 4 is very stable, but if you don't like it, you can choose another tool. Main competitor has no designer at all!

Import PSD's to Flash Builder

I've created several screens in Adobe Photoshop (PSD), for a mobile application that I'm going to develop in Adobe Flash Builder 4.5. How do I import those PSD screens for use into my Flash Builder Flex Project?

First question: are you planning on using your Photoshop created screen files, to cover the ENTIRE screen width/height of your Flash Builder project? For example, a screen image set up for a Motorola Droid would need to be 480px wide X 854 px high....vs.....say a Samsung Galaxy S3 screen of 1280px X 720px. In each case, you will need to use the multi-dpi image settings to compensate for the variety of image screens (backgrounds) that you will need. I myself have extensive knowledge in this area, as most of my applications include heavily creative PSD graphics.
So to begin, you will want to create a source folder to hold your images (screens). You do this by "right clicking" on the "src" file of your newly created mobile app project, and creating a new "Folder" called simply..."assets". Once completed, your new "assets" folder will appear in the "src/source" folder. Now, open Design View in Flash Builder...and drag an "image" component from the tray on the left...and place it on your app screen. Constrain the top, bottom, left, and right of the image component to 0, if the dimensions of your PSD/.png graphic file are say...480 x 854. This will set your image to fill the whole app screen. Next, we'll drag our graphic from Photoshop...and drop it into our newly created "assets" file. After this, and while still in design mode, we'll set the source of the image, to the image we just placed into our "assets" folder. Once that is done, click the refresh icon on the tool bar above Design Mode....and your new background will appear in your Flash Builder project.
Of course, if you are going to use multi-dpi images for backgrounds, then we have a few more steps to cover beyond this one.
Hope this helps you,
Craig Workman
Software Architect | SwitcHHat.com

Future of Flash Builder

I just read that Adobe will discontinue Flash Catalyst and the Design View in Flash builder ?
Is that TRUE ? Programatically Layout and Design uh?
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4085187#4085187
If so that would be a BIG step backwards

I am a designer/developer - I do use the design view extensively. And yes I am more than worth my salt and more. For me, being able to have immediate visual feedback is absolutely necessary. I don't like coding "blind". I have had the opportunity to work Microsoft Blend - Visual Studio since 2007 - It really is what I hoped flex would be. The best of both worlds. As front-end interface developer designer I could work on the exact same source-code, submitting to SVN on a regular basis together with the software engineers developing the backend and SDK. Blend allowed me controle over the primitive shapes that makes up a component. This allowed extreme customisation and optimisation. The wysiwyg view is an absolute crucial part of the process (e.g. do I want this rectangle to have 5px margins or 4, do the shadow work better with a 10 px falloff or a 8px falloff, do I want pixel snap on or off [whish flash had that] - which does look and work different than the photoshop one so I DO HAVE TO DESIGN in the wysiwyg as well)
Yes sure, I do go through a phase designing in Illustrator and Photoshop, but putting the components together takes time. I do not simply import flat artwork and then wrap them in some appropriate container. I build components up using multiple primitive shapes which gets re-purposed and targeted for various states, subtle animations, color-changes and has to comply to it's parent-component's rescaling capabilities. During that phase I do NOT want to continuously recompile. (although I would sometimes create a separate project just to test a specific component that can only be fully viewed after recompiled).
The excuse of "all good coders don't use the design view anyway" is a cop out. I can understand if Adobe says
1) we did not have the resources to do it decently (like Microsoft Blend)
2) we simply do not put the resources in to hire clever enough developers to create a decent tool
But a statement like it's preferable to work only blindly in code is simply wrong and naive of the state of art of dev. tools. Maybe for a dos-like interface or win-32 forms style interface only using stock-standard layout and components.
The biggest advantage of Microsoft Blend is being able to have split view open - I do this with Flashbuilder as well although it is slower and more buggy than Blend - I would write the markup and see updates realtime, switch over to Visual Studio that has the project open in the background for some serious code-completion capabilities - then miss my wysiwyg view - and switch rigth back to Blend.
Why am I using flash-builder/flex - if it was not for the fact that Microsofts wpf-framework only works fully on Win-OS or a subset of it as a silverlight plugin on fewer platforms than flash - I would have used Microsoft. The reason using flash is because it can be deployed on so many platforms - consistently (not like the html4 and now 5 chaos) - It has powerful interactive and multimedia capabilities.
My HTML works exactly the same way - for certain core complex components I will code and have a wysiwyg open as well for better navigation, more inuitive decision making and less time spend going backwards and forwards between compiling/running in the browser - but with the sad state of wysiwyg of dreamweaver unluckily I have to swithc more often (not because I am a more "CLEVER" developer)
Summary - I will use flash/flex only if there is no alternative because of this decision - Flash was supposed to be a creative environment to create highly interactive and creative applications/content for multiple platforms.
Thanks Adobe , I have used Macromedia director since 1993 - You managed to kill that off and now you are messing with flash - It could have been so much more. You simply lack the vision and we are stuck with the limitations, inconsistency, long-development time of HTML5 and a messy array of tools to try and make it usefull.
Whish Microsoft had the vision to make wpf work on all platforms....

Are Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 the same ?

Hi Everyone,
1. Are Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 the same ?
2. Are Flash Builder 4 and Flash CS4 the same ?
Thanks,
May

Grizzzzzzzzzz wrote:
AFAIK
1. Are Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 the same ?
Yes, flash builder 4 was the name given to what is effectively flex 4.
This answer is, essentially wrong.
Flex 4 is a Software Development Kit (SDK) that includes a compiler, a user interface framework, and a few other items.
Flash Builder 4 is an IDE that can be used to develop Flex applications. Flash Builder 4 can also be used to code ActionScript w/o any dependencies to the Flex Framework.
Grizzzzzzzzzz wrote: 2. Are Flash Builder 4 and Flash CS4 the same ?
No, Creative suite 4 is a software library consisting of many different programs
This answer is much more correct; but for additional clarification:
Flash Builder 4 is an IDE that programmers can use to develop applications for the Flash Platform.
Flash Professional CS4 is an IDE that Designers can use to create time-line based animations for the Flash Platform.
One is geared for designers; and another for programmers. In theory they can be used to reach the same end point although I wouldn't want to do application programming in Flash Professional; nor would I Want to do design stuff in Flash Builder.

Debug Player for Flash Builder Burrito

Is there a debug player out for the FB Burrito release? Mine was complaining about the player version when I went to debug. I installed the latest release, and now it doesn't complain, but I don't get any traces (which usually means the wrong version of the debug version).
Do I need to reinstall FB(B) and hope for the best, or can someone direct me to a stand alone download?
Cheers!

Hi,
There's a known bug with the preview release regarding trace() calls disappearing when an FXG file is present in your project and design view is enabled.
Can you please confirm whether disabling design view by toggling Window -> Enable Design view, restarting Flash Builder and doing a Project clean brings back traces for good?
P.S: This is in the release notes - http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Builder_Burrito and this is the bug - https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-27654
Thanks,
Anirudh

Flash Builder Design Mode Bug Workaround (!!!)

I've been fighting this annoyance since FB4 came out, and while I still don't think that custom/embedded fonts in design view are fixed by this, I've been able to reproduce this "fix" (workaround) to get design view to show fonts/theme correctly under some very specific circumstances on two separate PCs.
If anyone from Adobe sees this I'd like to know whether this sounds familiar or is possibly logged as a bug already somewhere in JIRA.. if not I could probably do that as long as it won't be a wasted effort.
The problem:
You're using a Halo theme but certain CSS settings (specifically and possibly limited to FONTS) don't work properly in design view even though they work fine in Flash. Essentially this makes design view practically useless since choice of font family, size, and weight can effect component sizing if you aren't hard-coding component sizes (ugh)... ruining your efforts to use design view for UI design if your UI has any level of complexity (or uses absolute positioning at all).
The specific circumstances seem to be:
You're using the Halo theme (you have no special 'skinning' requirements and want Halo defaults w/only CSS customizations)
You've upgraded a Flex 3 project to Flex 4 SDK (not sure if this is needed to reproduce the issue)
Using a regular non-embedded font (embedded fonts still do crap out, but even this 'workaround' doesn't fix that problem)
You're using swc library files such as the Swiz lib, Mate, Flexlib, etc. (I think it's ANY swc, not specific to any one)
This may also only apply when using an "mx only" project (no Spark), since we're using Halo here
The two part fix (as far as I can tell you need BOTH before design view works correctly):
In .actionScriptProperties, add the following bolded line after the compiler tag like so:
</compiler>
<theme themeIsDefault="false" themeIsSDK="true" themeLocation="${SDK_THEMES_DIR}/frameworks/themes/Halo"/>
<applications>
(I think this may only apply to 'upgraded' projects, as the line does seem to be present in newly created FB4 Halo projects. My guess is that an "upgraded" project should have such a line added, but doesn't get it due to an oversight/bug.)
The somewhat painful, and definitely odd part. Remove all your SWC library files from /libs. Grab the source code for the libraries and drop them into your project's /src folder as if you'd written them yourself. (This may require some research and knowledge on special requirements to build the libs, such as with Swiz's compiler metadata compiler settings which you need to put into your project's settings.) After you get things set up right and the project compiles again, doing a refresh of design view should finally give you proper looking Halo controls and fonts so they look identical to the Flash runtime view.
Why this works, I've no idea. I suspect it has something to do with that stupid and annoying (and supposedly 'harmless') design mode warning message you get when you include a library like Swiz or Mate in your project. (Design mode could not load xxxxxxxxxxxxx.swc. It may be incompatible with this SDK, or invalid. (DesignAssetLoader.CompleteTimeout)) - this warning doesn't break your application, people seem to think it's just a harmless warning..but is it breaking design view?
If anyone has any idea what's going on here, why this 'fixes' the problem (a better work around), or has any other insight I'd love to hear it. The combo of needing to do two things (in my specific case) to fix the problem really made this a ROYAL PAIN, I still can't believe I found it.

Hi Fernando, sorry for the delayed response. CSS Design Mode is not available for Flex 4 projects, but it is still available in Flex 3 projects. The reason for this is that designing components in Flex 4 is often a lot different, since it relies highly on the new spark skinning architecture. There is, however, an Appearance panel available in design view which supplies a set of the main inheriting styles. Setting these styles in the Appearance panel will result in assigning values to a global style selector.
I hope this helps,
Rob

Flash builder 4.5 Grey background in Design Mode

I just installed Flash builder 4.5 in my Kubuntu OS. I can created a new flex project in my eclipse.
However, when I switched from source mode to design mode. The background is grey and doesn't
show any components (nor the white background). I was wondering if you guys have solution for this.
Thanks a lot.

I just installed Flash builder 4.5 in my Kubuntu OS. I can created a new flex project in my eclipse.
However, when I switched from source mode to design mode. The background is grey and doesn't
show any components (nor the white background). I was wondering if you guys have solution for this.
Thanks a lot.

No Design Mode in Flash Builder 4.7

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