FlexBox, General

In case you are wondering where are those updates that I promised to FlexBox’s features and its components list… well there was a break in and theft in my house last Wednesday and among other things my beloved Laptop was stolen ….. I am writing this post sitting in an Internet Cafe (Yukk!!!!) …..This has set me back a few days on all these updates that I had planned but not to worry, I have backups of everything I need and I’m trying to get back on track as soon as possible.

The Flex Components space has been Hot!! lately and I will soon be adding some excellent new components to flexbox .. so stay tuned.

I have been a little slow with emails as well, I hope you understand .. I will reply soon.

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.

Flex, FlexBox, RIA

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.