FlexBox: 101 Flex Components and growing …

FlexBox

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:

  1. Who made this component (link to his website)
  2. Compatibility of the component
  3. A link to the authors explanation of the component on his blog/website
  4. Links to demos/samples of the component available on the authors blog/website
  5. Link to the source of the component available on the authors blog/website
  6. 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:

  1. 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
  2. Add Screenshots: A picture is worth a thousand words so I want to provide screenshots to all components.
  3. 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.
  4. Rating Mechanism: A simple way for users to rate the components available on FlexBox
  5. 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
  6. 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.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “FlexBox: 101 Flex Components and growing …,” an entry on Rags to Riches

Published:
02.27.07 / 4pm
Category:
Flex, FlexBox, RIA