April 08, 2008
New Pivot Component in Alpha
Satish from the Flex team has been working on expanding the logic available in our OLAPDataGrid to help provide an example of a Pivot Component, similar to what you'd see in Excel. It's in alpha quality, but is a great example of the power of the Flex Data Visualization Components.
Check it out and provide feedback!
Posted by mchotin at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2008
Another Spell Checking Component
Bruce Deen has created a spell checking component that "provides spell checking capability for Adobe Flex 2.0 RichTextEditor and TextArea components." He is making the software available as donation ware, so if you like it and use it, be sure to donate some money to him.
The component has been added to the Flex components page on Flex.org.
- Mike Potter
Posted by flexteam2 at 07:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2007
More Community Components Surfacing
This is turning out to be Flex component week. First a link on DZone to a spreadsheet component that is being written for Flex. Then, two emails arrived in my inbox from people who wanted components listed on Flex.org. The first was an open source community project called Flexed run by Uday Shankar. You can check out the four Flex components in the project or read the Flexed component blog.
The second was an email from Jim Rutherford, who has written the ThumbBrowser component. This is similar to what you've seen from Apple and their .Mac service lately, where you have a single image shown and when you move your mouse to the left or right other images appear. Check out the demo online and then read the blog entry for links to the source code.
The last two, Flexed Toolkit and ThumbBrowser, have been added to the Flex components page on Flex.org.
Posted by flexteam2 at 06:36 AM | Comments (4)
November 26, 2007
Cool New Flex Components
I received two emails on the weekend informing me of components to add to the Flex components page on Flex.org. The first was from Connect Studios, who have released 2 more components for free download from their website. Flex a form, which Flex Auto Form Build Component which makes building forms easier, and the Flex auto complete component which adds auto complete support to form fields. The second email was from Flex Monster, who have written a pivot table component for Flex applications. If you have components to add, check out the Flex components page and then submit your own to be added.
- Mike Potter
Posted by flexteam2 at 08:22 AM | Comments (5)
August 02, 2007
Flex Toolkit Available at eBay
The eBay Developer Network has announced the availability of an Flex Toolkit for eBay. From their blog, "The Flex Toolkit is an ActionScript library which enables a Flex application to integrate with the eBay platform. It written in ActionScript 3 and is built on top of the eBay Shopping API. The toolkit allows applications to search for items, get item details and get current information about an item's status.
The Flex Toolkit can be used to develop desktop applications or widgets/gadgets that can be deployed to a website. To download the toolkit or to get more information, visit the Flash Developer Center or the Flex Toolkit Developer Center."
Enjoy. Now you can build a competitor to San Dimas, the eBay AIR application.
- Mike
Posted by flexteam2 at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
The Flex Team's Component Plans
There have been requests for public guidance on what components Adobe will be releasing in the future, especially since there are developers who would like to make or extend components on their own without then having Adobe duplicate their efforts. In that spirit we'd like to share our current thinking.
Note that these are forward-looking statements and therefore subject to change, but best represent our plans at the moment. The primary component areas we are focusing on include:
- Enhancing the List-based components by adding functionality common to data grids and trees in other component libraries
- Making enhancements to the existing Charting components (and their core framework), with a focus on expanding the API to afford greater control over axes, skinning, data hints, and other decorations.
- Investigating new types of navigators in order to provide a best of breed solution for organizing information and processes.
- Including some of the specialized text fields now available on the Exchange (e.g., autocomplete and masked input)
While there are many opportunities for both free and commercial components, there are several areas where we would particularly welcome community contribution, including:
- Specialized components that address a particular UI need, such as a drawing surface
- Components that provide better I18N support than is currently available in the core component library (e.g., the DateChooser/DateField controls)
- Contributions to the scheduling framework currently posted on Labs
- Utility libraries, adding to what is already available in as3corelib (http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/); e.g., an XPath implementation building on top of the AS3 XML class that supports the W3C spec
- Themes
- Sample applications that demonstrate one or more concepts (big or small)
- Flex Cookbook entries (http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_cookbook)
On a related note, we do intend to incorporate the recently released Ant tasks for the Flex Compiler and the Flex Compiler Shell into the SDK at some point in the future.
We hope that this helps clarify our plans. If you would like to double-check with us before beginning a new component or enhancing an existing one you can feel free to email Matt Chotin. With that said, in keeping inquiries confidential we will not be able to share whether we know if another party is already working on the same or similar component. We encourage you to use the public mailing lists and forums to investigate whether an investment in a particular component would be worthwhile.
Stay tuned for even more news on how Adobe intends to provide insight into future versions of Flex!
Posted by mchotin at 05:57 PM | Comments (8)
January 20, 2007
Component: Docking Toolbar
The Docking Toolbar is now available on the Adobe Flex Exchange (click the Exchange link if the direct component link doesn't seem to work). You may post questions and feedback in the comments here and the authors will try to respond.
Posted by mchotin at 05:03 PM | Comments (13)
November 27, 2006
Component: Masked TextInput
The Masked TextInput is now available on the Adobe Flex Exchange (click the Exchange link if the direct component link doesn't seem to work). You may post questions and feedback in the comments here and the authors will try to respond.
Posted by mchotin at 04:48 PM | Comments (36)
October 27, 2006
When making updates to Flex Exchange
I just realized that we don't get notifications when you guys update any entries in the Flex Exchange. I've updated the Exchange now, but if you have something up there and make changes please mail flex-exchange-admin AT adobe.com so we can make sure to get everything approved. We do get notifications of new submissions BTW.
Posted by mchotin at 06:12 PM | Comments (2)
September 27, 2006
Component: AutoComplete Text Input
The AutoComplete TextInput is now available on the Adobe Flex Exchange (click the Exchange link if the direct component link doesn't seem to work). You may post questions and feedback in the comments here and the authors will try to respond.
Posted by mchotin at 03:59 PM | Comments (46)
Announcing the Flex Team Components
The Flex team is pleased to announce the first of what we hope will be many new components. As we investigate common themes behind usable RIAs, we may experiment with components to see if they fit within a model that appeals to our customers and their users. We intend to release these experiments on the Adobe Exchange, available for free for you to play with or use within your applications.
Each component will be released individually on the Exchange, and can be used in your application simply by adding the pre-compiled SWC into your library path. Samples and documentation will be included as well. Finally, we will include the source so that you can modify the component as you see fit. It should be noted that we consider these components to be at Alpha quality. This means that we consider a component to be feature complete, but we may not have worked out every use-case and there may be some bugs. For example, while the components are written to support styling and skinning (in the same model as the Flex 2 framework), these areas may be less tested than others. As we see how customers are using the components and gather feedback we may release additional versions that include bug fixes, or expose more properties, or even behave differently. Of course we may also determine that the component is not useful for our developers and that we should focus on different ones.
We will be releasing these components under a license similar to the Flex SDK. In essence you will be able to use and modify these components within the context of a Flex application, module, or library for no charge.
Our first component is an AutoComplete text input which allows you to specify values for the component to suggest to a user as they type. It is available on the Exchange now!
Posted by mchotin at 03:55 PM | Comments (22)