With just 3 laps to go in the Hungarian grand prix, without any premonition, the jubilation of Massa cruising towards the checkered flag leaving all the racers behind him was blown away as his engine fails to complete the race. It was a disappointing race to watch being a fan of Ferrari. All the efforts those both Massa and Ferrari team put into the race was blown away. With perfect start that Massa got by getting ahead of Hemilton and Kovalainen in few seconds, perfect pit strategies and the breathing space Massa got when Hemilton bursts his tire, it seems victory was in his pocket. Amid all the dramas going on behind him, he seemed to be unstoppable by any means until his engine blows leaving all the Ferrari fans crestfallen. It showed how cruel the game can be to the one who deserves to be the winner. I wonder what is going through Massa’s mind and hope he will recover from it and will show the same spirit in future games. Needless to say he is a great racer but the question is can he show the championship resilience all the way to the checkered flag of Brazilian Grand Prix.

Lately i was working on a drag and drop for my project and i have to allow the user to drag and item from one container to another container. Somehow the drag and drop was not working though the code looks fine.The drag manager was not allowing to drop the item on the target container. This was freaking me out as the drag and drop handling code seems ok. After searching on the internet i found that to use container as a drop target, the background color of the container should not be transparrent as doing so the drag and drop manager will not be able to detect whether the mouse pointer is on a possible drop target.The backgroundColor property should be set for this to work.

The code shown below uses simple drag and drop of an image within a container:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="100%" height="100%" layout="horizontal"  borderColor="#3D7FAD" horizontalAlign="center" verticalAlign="middle">
<mx:Script>
	<![CDATA[
		import mx.containers.Canvas;
		import mx.events.DragEvent;
		import mx.controls.Image;
		import mx.core.IUIComponent;
		import mx.managers.DragManager;
		import mx.core.DragSource;

		
		private function mouseMoveHandler( evt:MouseEvent ):void {
	       	var dragInitiator:Image=Image(evt.currentTarget);
	       	var ds:DragSource = new DragSource();
	       	ds.addData(dragInitiator, "test");               
	       	DragManager.doDrag(dragInitiator, ds, evt);
        }
        
        private function dragEnterHandler( evt:DragEvent ):void {
        	if (evt.dragSource.hasFormat("test")) {
                    DragManager.acceptDragDrop(Canvas(evt.currentTarget));
            }
        }
        
        private function dropHandler( evt:DragEvent ):void {
        	evt.dragSource.dataForFormat("test").x = evt.currentTarget.mouseX;
            evt.dragSource.dataForFormat("test").y = evt.currentTarget.mouseY;
        }

        
	]]>
</mx:Script>
	<mx:Canvas  width="90%" height="90%" dragEnter="dragEnterHandler(event);" dragDrop="dropHandler(event);" borderColor="#2D5A7A" borderStyle="solid">
		<mx:Image id="img" width="40" height="40" source="@Embed('../assets/task.png')" mouseMove="{mouseMoveHandler(event)}" />
	</mx:Canvas>
</mx:Application>

the demo is shown below:

As you can see the drag and drop is not working due to the background of the container being transparrent. Now if we set the backgroundColor property of the container as backgroundColor="#EEEEEE", the drag and drop will work which is shown below.

Sometimes, these minor problems can take considerable time to get to the solution. I will be careful from now on ... :).

Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends – commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours but are rarely credited with being driven by creative fevers. Programmers talk about software development on weekends, vacations, and over meals not because they lack imagination, but because their imagination reveals worlds that others cannot see.
-Larry O'Brien and Bruce Eckel in Thinking in C#

Everytime i read this quote, i feel like wow.....