Flex, FlexBox, RIA

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:

Flex developers need reusable components but those are so hard to find and scattered all over the place.

The approaches taken by both these solutions to solve the same problem are very different:

1. FlexBox is a directory which aggregates and then points to various flex components available for developers on the web in blogs, discussion lists and various other places, thus presenting all this scattered information in a more structured format.
2. FlexLib is an open source library of UI components for Flex, the idea here is to create a well structured, good quality, open source code library of Flex Components from scratch by restructuring existing components and creating new ones.

Even though to me FlexLib (in the long run) does sound like a better solution, I also feel that FlexBox complements FlexLib very well and both these projects have their unique places in the community…. It will take some time before all the existing and new components move to FlexLib …. FlexBox could serve as an excellent resource during this period. Moreover, to be on FlexLib you need to follow a particular structure and a coding guideline and there is a good chance that all components (especially the existing ones) may never move to FlexLib, in that case as well FlexBox comes in handy. Here’s how I see it FlexLib gives you less in number but a good quality set of components where as FlexBox gives you a more extensive some what exhaustive list of components, the quality of code in some of which may not be up to the mark, but they do tell you how to do what you need to do. (Note: FlexBox will have a component rating system soon)

So here’s what I see myself doing in the recent future (in order of precedence):

1. Update the FlexBox’s component list with more components that I’ve found (including the new ones now available in FlexLib).
2. Implement an RSS feed for the component list.
3. Add a rating mechanism, where users can rate different components.
4. Add screenshots of components.
5. Refine descriptions/overviews as much as possible.
6. Figure out what to do next …

What do you guys think? ….I would love to hear your opinion on this article, as well as any other feedback on FlexBox.