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.

A few weeks back Yakov Fain on his flexblog took a guess on “How many Flex developers are there?” and estimated the number to be around 70000 plus …

… people who instead of screaming on the net “Flex is cool” are quietly studying Flex in vocational schools in Bangalore suburbs. They are not registering themselves on Flex forums …

The estimate is quite reasonable but I feel that there aren’t many such people who are learning/working on Flex but who don’t have a presence in the Flex virtual world (as blog readers/writers or discussion forum participants). I base this on the fact that the offline resources for learning Flex (mainly Books and Training) are still very scarce. I cannot comment on the rest of the world but here in Bangalore none of the popular bookstores have any Flex books available, most of them don’t even have Flex listed as a topic in their databases. From a quick search on Google i found that there are a few Adobe training partners that provide training in Flex but their number is also very limited.

Having stated the above let me try and estimate “how many Flex developers are there in India” …

Abdul Qabiz recently compiled a list of Flex resources in india. As I only plan on using the discussion groups for my estimate, his list is pretty much exhaustive barring the Adobe Flex community on Orkut.

The number of members on each of these groups is as follows:

• iGeeks: 364
• RIA-India yahoo group: 174
• Flex India google group: 43
• IndiMaD google group: 32
  
• Adobe Flex Community on Orkut: 267

Total: 880

Lets divide this total by 2 assuming that only half of this total are unique people, that makes the figure 440. Now keeping my views above in perspective, lets assume that this figure is 20% of the number of flex developers in India … I feel that there are about 2200 Flex developers in India.

In February of 2005 Jesse James Garrett coined the term AJAX in an Adaptive Path Essay and the way we perceive the Internet has changed ever since. Users are demanding and developers are providing more and more desktop like functionality in web sites, so much so that the very concept of web “pages” seems to be loosing significance. We are now experiencing the evolution of a new class of Internet based applications where a user’s experience is finally an equal to functionality, Rich Internet Applications are the talk of the day and that is what this weblog is all about.

“Rags to Riches” is a journal of my experiences as I observe and contribute to the evolution of a Richer Internet, an Internet where applications are more engaging, interactive and intuitive. There are a host of technologies aiding this evolution … AJAX helped in setting the stage, Adobe’s Flex, Microsoft’s WPF/E and others are taking the march forward.

Flex is my personal choice of technology for making RIAs, I’m going to keep the details of why I like Flex for a future article but in short I believe that if used properly it is the best solution available(as of now) for making RIAs. I started playing with Flex around the release of Flex 2 i.e. mid 2006 and there has been no looking back ever since. In December 2006, I left my Java development position in EMC for a Flex centered position with SAP Labs and things have never been so good. I am currently involved in some very cool Flex development and I would be sharing whatever I can on this blog. I enjoy developing flex components and I plan on sharing some of them as well in this space.

It is my birthday tomorrow and as I start a new year of my life, I am very excited about this technological evolution that I’m a part of and hope to talk a lot about it on this blog.