Flex 3 Component Solutions: Build Amazing Interfaces with Flex Components

Book description

Flex has revolutionized the development of rich Internet applications, giving developers the framework necessary to easily create ever more powerful applications. Components form an essential part of this framework, and once you understand how to fully use them, your productivity and creativity will be taken to a whole new level. Flex 3 Component Solutions will show just what you can achieve with components and exactly how to achieve it.

You'll see just how simple it is to use components to create amazing interfaces for your applications be they media players, data visualizations, 3D graphics—the list is long. Finally, there'll be times when you'll want to or have no alternative but to create your own components. This book will show you how to do this for your own ends, or so you can contribute to the Flex component community by distributing them.

Flex 3 Component Solutions is a tour de force of components, and all of these components are demonstrated using real-world Flex code that you can use as starting points for your own applications. Take what you learn for this book, and then go out and create your own amazing interfaces quickly and easily: reuse, re-purpose, redesign, and do it all faster and with greater quality control than you ever thought possible.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. ABOUT THE TECHNICAL REVIEWER
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. LAYOUT CONVENTIONS
  6. 1. A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO FLEX
    1. 1.1. Getting started with Flex
    2. 1.2. Adding some interactivity
    3. 1.3. Managing and displaying data
      1. 1.3.1. Refining control presentation
      2. 1.3.2. Building ActionScript classes
    4. 1.4. Using containers for layout
      1. 1.4.1. Laying out controls absolutely
    5. 1.5. Custom rendering
      1. 1.5.1. Building renderer modules
    6. 1.6. Where we will go from here
  7. 2. MAKING STATES ROCK
    1. 2.1. Recipes for states
    2. 2.2. Show/Hide panels
    3. 2.3. Implementing a two-panel interface
    4. 2.4. Three panels
    5. 2.5. Slide in
    6. 2.6. Pop-Out
    7. 2.7. Emerge
    8. 2.8. Flip
    9. 2.9. Grower
    10. 2.10. Building your own state systems
    11. 2.11. Where we will go from here
  8. 3. GETTING EVERYTHING SET UP
    1. 3.1. Building a solid foundation
    2. 3.2. Introducing components
      1. 3.2.1. Small components and skins
      2. 3.2.2. MXP files
      3. 3.2.3. Source code for libraries
      4. 3.2.4. SWC files
      5. 3.2.5. Custom installers
      6. 3.2.6. Canned components
    3. 3.3. Installing AS3CoreLib and FlexLib
    4. 3.4. Installing Elixir
    5. 3.5. Creating SWC libraries from MXP components
    6. 3.6. Setting up the server
    7. 3.7. Installing PHP
    8. 3.8. Installing AMFPHP
    9. 3.9. Installing the baseball data set
    10. 3.10. Installing the football data set
    11. 3.11. Installing the United States data (usdata) data set
    12. 3.12. The static content
    13. 3.13. Where we will go from here
  9. 4. UPGRADING YOUR CONTAINERS
    1. 4.1. New styles of containers
    2. 4.2. Flow container
    3. 4.3. Drag scrolling
    4. 4.4. Smooth HBox and VBox
    5. 4.5. Button scrolling
    6. 4.6. Resizable and movable objects
    7. 4.7. Window shades
    8. 4.8. Horizontal accordion
    9. 4.9. Super tabs
    10. 4.10. Toolbars
    11. 4.11. Multiple Document Interface
    12. 4.12. Upgraded forms
    13. 4.13. Where we will go from here
  10. 5. HANDY NEW CONTROL TYPES
    1. 5.1. New types of controls
    2. 5.2. Canvas buttons
    3. 5.3. Enhanced button skin
    4. 5.4. Korax ColorPicker
    5. 5.5. Wheels
    6. 5.6. Dual slider
    7. 5.7. Loading spinners
    8. 5.8. Prompts, description panes, and tooltips
    9. 5.9. Masked inputs
    10. 5.10. Auto-completion
    11. 5.11. Time entry
    12. 5.12. Vertical menus
    13. 5.13. Where we will go from here
  11. 6. FUN WITH IMAGES
    1. 6.1. Introducing image components
    2. 6.2. 3D Carousel
    3. 6.3. Cover flow
    4. 6.4. Rotating menus
    5. 6.5. Image grids
    6. 6.6. Slideshows
    7. 6.7. Degrafa
    8. 6.8. 3D Wall
    9. 6.9. Where we will go from here
  12. 7. AUDIO AND VIDEO COMPONENTS
    1. 7.1. XML MP3 Player project
    2. 7.2. Advanced Flash Components MP3 player
    3. 7.3. Yet another audio player example
    4. 7.4. Video
    5. 7.5. FX movie player
    6. 7.6. FLVPlayer
    7. 7.7. Where we will go from here
  13. 8. 2D GRAPHING COMPONENTS: INTRODUCING CHARTING
    1. 8.1. Bubble charts
    2. 8.2. Line charts
    3. 8.3. Area charts
    4. 8.4. Interactive scatter plotting
    5. 8.5. Radar charts
    6. 8.6. Pie charts
    7. 8.7. Sparklines
    8. 8.8. Scientific plotting
    9. 8.9. Where we will go from here
  14. 9. 3D GRAPHING COMPONENTS
    1. 9.1. Introducing 3D charts
      1. 9.1.1. 3D area charts
        1. 9.1.1.1. Stepped area chart
        2. 9.1.1.2. Stacked area chart
      2. 9.1.2. 3D bar charts
      3. 9.1.3. 3D pie charts
    2. 9.2. Scientific charts in 3D
    3. 9.3. Faking 3D with Google SketchUp
    4. 9.4. Where we will go from here
  15. 10. VISUALIZING TIME AND SPACE
    1. 10.1. Analog gauges
    2. 10.2. Graphing on maps
      1. 10.2.1. Adding knobs and dials
    3. 10.3. Timelines: The fourth dimension for data
      1. 10.3.1. The ILOG Resource Chart
    4. 10.4. Synchronizing media and controls
    5. 10.5. Where we will go from here
  16. 11. INTERACTIVE MAPPING CONTROLS
    1. 11.1. Three cool mapping controls
    2. 11.2. Yahoo! Maps
    3. 11.3. The UMap
    4. 11.4. Where we will go from here
  17. 12. INTRODUCING HIERARCHAL DATA AND COMPONENTS
    1. 12.1. Tree Maps
      1. 12.1.1. The ILOG Elixir TreeMap control
    2. 12.2. Cascading lists
    3. 12.3. Checkbox trees
    4. 12.4. Where we will go from here
  18. 13. NETWORK GRAPH COMPONENTS
    1. 13.1. Graphing Flickr with SpringGraph
      1. 13.1.1. Getting set up with Flickr
    2. 13.2. Flare for displaying tree structures
    3. 13.3. The RaVis node graph
      1. 13.3.1. Rendering the nodes
    4. 13.4. yFiles FLEX
    5. 13.5. Where we will go from here
  19. 14. COOL PREMADE SKINS
    1. 14.1. Skinning basics
    2. 14.2. A simple form to play with skins
    3. 14.3. Blue Plastic
    4. 14.4. Darke Nite
    5. 14.5. Darkroom
    6. 14.6. Flekistral
    7. 14.7. Obsidian
    8. 14.8. OS X
    9. 14.9. Treasure Map
    10. 14.10. Where we will go from here
  20. 15. BUILDING YOUR OWN COMPONENTS
    1. 15.1. Building one component requires two projects
      1. 15.1.1. Linking the two projects
    2. 15.2. Setting up the component
      1. 15.2.1. Using MXML to assemble the user interface
      2. 15.2.2. Writing the component code
      3. 15.2.3. Perfecting the well-designed component
      4. 15.2.4. Spiffing up the look with CSS
      5. 15.2.5. Completing the visualization
    3. 15.3. Where we will go from here
  21. 16. HACKING INTO DATA: A FLEX SKUNKWORKS
    1. 16.1. Hacking HTML data
      1. 16.1.1. Parsing the HTML
    2. 16.2. Accessing JSON services
    3. 16.3. Security issues
    4. 16.4. Where we will go from here

Product information

  • Title: Flex 3 Component Solutions: Build Amazing Interfaces with Flex Components
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: November 2008
  • Publisher(s): Apress
  • ISBN: 9781430215981