Styles in Flash look great in tutorials and are used as an example of Flash supporting standards ("ah, but Flash supports CSS!") and are, well, about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Why? Three reasons:

1. They're not visual. A style is comprised of text and numbers. Not pixels and colors
2. They require programming skills. This means that programmers end up implementing styles, not graphic designers or illustrators.
3. They are not customizable enough for real-world needs.

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My MacBook Pro runs hot -- too hot to use on my lap. My workaround is to put it on its Second Skin when its on my lap. Apple's official line is to call them "notebooks, not laptops" (i.e, you shouldn't use one on your lap), instead of addressing the issue. Yeah, right, how do you spell "cop out" again?.

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I was talking recently with Andrew Shorten, who deals with most of the Flex stuff at Adobe's UK branch, and he mentioned that he'd read my blog posts about the trouble I had using Vodafone's 3G service with my new MacBook Pro and my switch to T-Mobile and their mobile solution. Andrew also has a new Mac and is a Vodafone 3G customer and he apparently came up with a way to use the SIM card from the 3G card in his 3G mobile phone (he's using a Nokia N70).

The instructions are simple: (more...)