One design I am working on required a numbered list with a custom renderer and drag-move enabled. I had no idea how to do this the right way and it took me a couple of hours to finally get it. So I have released the source here just in case anyone else ever needs something similar.

I originally thought the List class was something like the Repeater class. Had it been, the instanceIndex property of the UIComponent would have been the simplest way to implement the feature. Unfortunately, the List doesn’t use Repeater at all. The key is actually the listData property on the renderer that the parent List tries to set on the renderer but only if the renderer implements the IDropInListItemRenderer.

Anyway, take a look at the implementation (right click to view source) – its pretty self-explanatory. I have set it drag/drop enabled but this implementation keeps the numbering correct.

I love to break out of the Flex look whenever I can. Flex does give me a lot of functionality that I don’t have to write from scratch in AS3 but for entertainment oriented applications, the default look doesn’t always work. Of course, being lazy, I always love it when I can make something look interesting without that much work.

So here is a rather simple extension to the TileList component that adds some personality to it. The code is simple enough, I just randomly add a small rotation to the images to give it more of a scattered deck of images look rather than a standard grid. A custom cell renderer adds to the effect. I have also added a ‘hover to see larger image’ thing there but that part isn’t completely done yet and so the images are getting clipped but its an interesting experiment on creating custom toolTips.

Check it out here and right click to view source.

Of late, I have started reading quite a bit on Recommendation Systems and I came accross this interesting paper on the topic. The cool thing is that it talks about virtual co.mmunities based on recommendation systems (I am sure Amazon uses a similar algorithm, since this seems pretty common sense).

On a side note, the paper did lead me to finding out what a Pearson’s Correlation is. Pretty neat. Further links on this entry as I come across ‘em

Links:
Content-Boosted Collaborative Filtering
Bunch o’ papers

This is why I don’t take long vacations . I just got back from a long one to discover every inch of my office covered in aluminum foil, courtesy Aaron( my manager, thats him in the black shirt) and a bunch of other developers. Apparently I got away easy since some of the other ideas were so much more…umm..creative .

I love working in a fun group.