FlexBox: 101 Flex Components and growing …
Introducing FlexBox 0.01 a directory of flex components scattered around the Internet in blogs, discussion lists and various websites.
Since the time I first developed interest in Flex (about mid last year), I have been collecting bookmarks to various flex components available in the community. A few days back I realized that I had over a 100 components bookmarked and I hardly used about 10 to 15 out of them regularly, maybe if this information was a little more structured i could find the components that I needed and when I needed them. I also felt that these bookmarks are a good resource to share with the community as it would be really helpful to people trying to find new components for their Flex Apps.
So … I spent my free time in the last few days building FlexBox. It is a very simple application that points to the blog articles, demos and source relating to different components that are available for use in the Flex blogosphere. At the time of posting this article, FlexBox has 101 components but I am hoping that once the word spreads you all will share your own set of links and/or components that you have created and we can together convert FlexBox into a comprehensive reference for available flex components.
My initial instinct was to design FlexBox to be something similar to the Component Explorer from Adobe, but with such a big list I felt that this would take a lot of time and effort so I deferred that to a later time. (If you are interested in that idea, get in touch with me, maybe we can work something out together).
You may have noticed above that the current FlexBox release is version 0.01 (a work in progress). The feature set provided right now is very basic and I plan on adding a lot of functionality before we reach 1.0
As of now, FlexBox displays the following information about a component:
- Who made this component (link to his website)
- Compatibility of the component
- A link to the authors explanation of the component on his blog/website
- Links to demos/samples of the component available on the authors blog/website
- Link to the source of the component available on the authors blog/website
- A small overview/description of the component (these are more like my quick notes or extracts form the author’s explanation)
FlexBox also allows you to very interactively search though the list of components and only the filtered results are shown to you.
Future Plans:
- Refine overviews/descriptions: The overviews right now are more like quick scratch pad notes and I want to refine them to provide as much useful information as possible
- Add Screenshots: A picture is worth a thousand words so I want to provide screenshots to all components.
- RSS Feeds: I think it will be very convenient for the users to have a feed that they could subscribe to which would let them know of a new component when its added.
- Rating Mechanism: A simple way for users to rate the components available on FlexBox
- Inbuilt mechanism for users to submit their components. For now, please do leave me links to new components in the comments of this post or email them to me on mrinal[dot]wadhwa[at]gmail.com
- Anything else that comes up later.
Note:
I have restricted the component list (for now) only to open source components. I don’t have anything against commercial components, I just wasn’t sure of any legal constraints that may relate to them
Feedback:
I have spent very little time developing this application and it’s bound to have bugs, I would really appreciate if you could leave me a note below whenever you notice one … it could be anything …. errors, broken functionality, broken links anything.
I would also love to hear any thoughts that you may have about any aspect of the application.
Important:
FlexBox is a directory of Adobe Flex Components, pointing to components available in the Flex Community. The Author of a component is the complete owner of that component and its source, please refer his/her licensing information before using any component. If you are an author and I am in any way violating your licence or hurting your sentiments by linking to your component from FlexBox, please accept my apology, drop me a note and I will immediately remove your component from FlexBox.
A Special Mention:
I would like to extend a special thank you to all the people out there who spend so much time developing Flex components and then share these components for all of us in the flex community benefit.
I would also like to mention that the visual design of FlexBox is some what inspired from Cynergy TV , I really liked the whole app on a reflecting table look and that’s what I gave FlexBox. So guys at Cynergy Systems … thank you and keep up the good work.
All right … so what are you waiting for go check out FlexBox and do let me know what you think.
February 27th, 2007
Thanks – this will be quite useful. I like to UI except I would prefer a more obvious highlight in the list of the item selected.
February 27th, 2007
Your plan no.3 (RSS feed) would be my no.1!
By the way, great great great idea and initiative, keep on!
February 27th, 2007
To Dave ….. Now that you’ve pointed out I agree that the highlight should be more prominent … I’ll fix it the next time I update flexbox … Thank you for the feedback
February 27th, 2007
To Quentin … your suggestion put more weight on the RSS Feed feature .. I’ll try and provide that as soon as possible.
Thank you
February 28th, 2007
Wow…Every component that I had discovered over my time with Flex is in the Box! Does this mean that I can stop spending so much time scouring the net since you’re doing it for us?
Awesome explorer app!
February 28th, 2007
hooray. will be useful.
one thing thou – the mirror web 2.0 effect is a bit annoying
February 28th, 2007
To Jun … I’m glad you like it .. Thank you
To Mick …
Annoying.. is it? I found it very cool when I first saw it on Cynergy TV.. hmm …. if some more people agree with you, I’ll remove it … thank you for the feedback.
Everyone else … what do you say?
February 28th, 2007
Thanks! This is a really great resource.
February 28th, 2007
[...] Rags to Riches » Blog Archive » FlexBox: 101 Flex Components and growing … “So … I spent my free time in the last few days building FlexBox. It is a very simple application that points to the blog articles, demos and source relating to different components that are available for use in the Flex blogosphere. At the time of posting this article, FlexBox has 101 components but I am hoping that once the word spreads you all will share your own set of links and/or components that you have created and we can together convert FlexBox into a comprehensive reference for available flex components.” [...]
March 1st, 2007
Great work Mrinal. Just curious, how someone can add a details to FlexBox?
Are you going to do it yourself or open up an API (REST) or a form to submit?
I couldn’t see it, please never mind if it’s already there.
-abdul
March 1st, 2007
Hi Abdul,
Good question !
Right now, there is no way for the users to submit a component from within FlexBox … that’s why its FlexBox 0.01
There will be a form (see above, future plans point 5) but there are other features like RSS and screenshots that take priority over that.
For now, if you want something added just leave me links in the comments of this article or you could even email me the details.
I plan on bi-weekly/weekly updates to the list of components depending on the number of components I discover and/or people have pointed me to.
I strongly encourage the community to keep sending me these links, I’m sure there are many components out there that I have not heard of and hence are not in FlexBox.
This way we could together convert FlexBox into a very useful resource.
Thank you
March 1st, 2007
[...] The last 36 hrs have been quite happening in the Flex components space ….. About 35 or so hours back I launched FlexBox with this article and many people in the community liked it a lot … Interestingly, a few hours back Darron Schall along with Doug McCune, Ted Patrick and Mike Chambers announced FlexLib, another great tool that addresses almost the same problem that FlexBox does: [...]
March 3rd, 2007
[...] FlexBox is a collection of Flex Components. There are already a set of Flex Components available to see and to download. [...]
March 7th, 2007
[...] My recent project FlexBox in the one week since its launch has had 5500 unique visitors and with the help of Google Analytics I was able to see from where all these visitors were coming from (Awesome!!). Google Analytics has this very cool feature where you can see your visitors (divided in chunks of 500) overlay on a map. The picture looked almost the same with all the different chunks 1-500, 500-1000 … an so on … here’s what one of these subsets looked like: [...]
March 29th, 2007
FlexBox’s app on a reflecting table look: how to…
I had first seen the app on a reflecting table look on Cynergy TV and I really liked it, so when I was building FlexBox I decided to give it the same look. Many people have recently asked me how I implemented that look … so I am posting this simple e…
April 4th, 2007
[...] P.S. Now that I have a computer at home again, those FlexBox updates are not very far off … so stay tuned [...]
April 6th, 2007
Very useful resource!
April 6th, 2007
Thanks Karan
.. I’m glad you like it.
August 5th, 2007
Hi wow your application is very useful i´ve seached a long time in Google for Flex Components, but i found nothing
but your appliction shows so much and usefull compoents it
saved me a lot of time^^
so thx 1000x
August 5th, 2007
Thank you Sascha, I’m very glad you like it.
March 1st, 2010
Thank you thank you thank YOU.
It soooo helps me.
THANK YOU