After months of GWT and GXT at work I wanted to see how the other side looks like. In my case that would be Flash based rich internet applications. Long time ago I did some experiments with Open Laszló but I did not really get into it.

Now I decided to check Flex so I downloaded free Flex SDK and started with some simple examples and tutorials. Building user interface seems to be quite easy but there are a lot of things I have tried out, yet. Learning server connections using Blaze DS is on my TODO as well as trying out Maven with Flex.

So far Flex seems to be quite easy to get started with as soon as you understand the difference between MXML and ActionScript. The syntax of ActionScript 3 is not too bad for Java programmer. I also bought Flex on Java book from Manning with 50% discount so maybe I end up getting serious with Flex.

Spring is here. In the morning the sun is already up when I go to work. Just couple weeks ago there was snow all around but it is all gone now.

Grid is a fast and versatile component of GXT. Testing it with Selenium is quite simple but requires couple points to be handled. After some thinking and experimenting I came up with following.

First of all, you will need Firebug or similar tool to inspect DOM created by GXT. A suitable example of Grid is http://extjs.com/examples/grid/grid.html. Simply open that URL and open your Firebug.

We are interested to check that Nokia's stock symbol matches NOK. By inspecting the symbol column cell for Nokia we see something like this:

<div class="x-grid3-cell-inner x-grid3-col-symbol">NOK</div>

We can use the 'x-grid3-col-symbol' as a CSS locator. The syntax in IDE is then 'css=div.x-grid3-col-symbol'. This selects the column but the we should also specify the row.

This can be done by creating a new class extending GridViewConfig and overriding getRowStyle method. This method should return suitable value (for example name from Model). You might want to add a postfix or prefix to the value to avoid conflicts. The value becomes part of the CSS style for the row. Set your own instance extending GridViewConfig to your Grid's using myOwnGrid.getView().setViewConfig() method.

Now you should be able to pin point a specific cell using Selenium locator with two CSS classes: 'css=div.x-grid3-col-symbol div.row_nokia'

I have spent a bit over a year living here in Scotland. To summarize, I made a list of some problems I encountered during this period. These are not fault of Scotland itself, though.

Water. This basic element came out from the wrong point of the washing machine and a plumber needs to be called. Water also came out from a radiator. And through the roof over a bay window during windy rain.

Electricity. Couple mysterious blackouts in the flat.

Gas. One of the flats was without official gas supply and that wasn't told to me until I started to call up gas companies to find out who is the provider.

Address. Lost address change notification for the council caused extra expenses and head ache. Wrong starting date in the systems of other council required several attempts to get corrected.

Money. Landlady losing banker's draft worth of 1050 pounds, took four months to solve with her and the bank.

Three. Took me a good amount of time and effort to cancel the mobile internet connection during the cool off period.

NHS. Assignment to a GP took several attempts before getting it right Pure lottery in my opinion.

So, couple minor issues but otherwise life has been good.