<rant mode="desperate" problem="serious" careerAtStake="true">
Hello. I've been learning Flex by working to create a sophisticated application therein. What I have learned- or encountered, at least, has not made me happy. Here's a quote from the Adobe Helps: "The DataGrid control is intended for viewing data, and not as a layout tool like an HTML table. ..." Then what do we use for editing data? Panel/Forms? No, I want to edit data grid cells, supposedly possible. There are many Flex DataGrid examples from offical (Adobe) and unofficial sources but they are all so trivial. Editing grid cell content, persisting that, and restoring that should be a basic example of grid operations: where are they from Adobe? I'd say they don't exist, because the Flex DataGrid cannot do it. I have a Flex 2.0.1 mx:DataGrid that has 13 or of 14 'editable' columns. I can edit, persist and restore these columns. MOST OF THE TIME. At random, tabbing around, then maybe mouseclicking, some more tabs, (hey, it probably will have done an RTE by now) I have an RTE (ugly user dialog that totally destroys confidence in the operation of the application). In the debugger it shows up as red type. My theory is the use of Timer code in the underlying framework leads to race conditions: sometime I lose the race. I've got about 20 screen shots of the thing crapping out. Who wants to see them... I sure don't. It always happens in the same place: ItemBeginEditBeginHandler - or something like that something about the _editedItemPosition being null. That Adobe code does not even have the simple error checking to see if it's input arg is null or something. It's also got the comment: "harder than it looks" (in the framework source) - perhaps it's much harder than it looks. Who can provide a link to a Flex Application that they have created that allows user edit on cells, can persist and restore those changes, and does not produce RTE at random with simple mouse-clicking/tabbing around on that grid. I'd be amazed!!!! </rant> -- John Harris
