dreckhände

Call it a feature? As soon as you click a button in a flash builder 4 project you get vertical and horizontal scrollbars.Not that there is much scrolling to do, about 2px. What you get to see is a dotted focus rect which fb4 insist to put around the entire page.

And this happens regardless whether you do it in spark or halo, with a button or toggelButton, on a group or canvas - I spent some hours of my life trying all combinations and variations which I could think of. Below is bare bones example of a minimal test.mxml which compiles both in Flex 3 and FlashBuilder 4:

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
    <mx:Canvas>
        <mx:Button label="Drück mich" />
    </mx:Canvas>

</mx:Application>

Both have source view

testButton Flex3 (581 KB)
testButton FlashBuilder 4 (1,66MB)

Note the different sizes of flex3 and fb4 compiled file size.

There is a spark version of the thing as well:

testButton Fb4 Spark (1,22 MB)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
               xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
               xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo" minWidth="1024" minHeight="768">
    <s:Group   id="myGroup"  >
        <s:Button  id="btn"  label="Drück mich" />
    </s:Group>
</s:Application>

While I have been using Flex 3 for about 3 years now my first impressions of FlashBuilder 4 are somewhat mixed. I downloaded and installed tbe beta 2 just a week before the release and it is quite fascinating to watch the the thing crawl on its path. Maybe I should just go and get me a shiny new quadcore to get my actioncript editor work in a bearable manner? With all the code highlights and helpfull hinting the thing is quite busy doing its own chores so I have to wait again and again when typing. Frequent actions like - mark a bit of text, copy, click on a number of places in my script and paste the stuff - now have been upgraded to an exercise in patience and keeping my mind focussed. Click on a tab to quickly change to another script and see flash builder go into deep contemplation for some 20 seconds. Wow! Can't work like that.

On the same box flex 3 runs with no nonsense like that. Is it related to running windows 7 (prof.) x64? Searching for other reports of this problem the first I found runs the very same OS and reports the same experience. (German only)