Custom Flex Components

Android 3D Tag Cloud

flexcomp — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:35:02 +0000

Form trumps Function many a time. Apple products are such a huge success primarily because of form (they are of course very functional too but the sucess can be attirbuted more to the display and user interactivity than to function). Android applications on the other hand are relatively weak on form and display. This is however changing with Adobe putting a lot of effort to incorporate Android development in there suite of products, Flash and Flex.

Flash is still many years ahead of HTML 5 when it comes to fantastic displays, dynamic behavious and user interactivity. Imagine now these Flash and Flex “components” ported to Android for use in Android applications. You can expect an entirely new breed of interactive Android applications powered by Flash. Take for example the 3D Flex Tag Cloud application from FlexDownloads.com. It took about a day to convert this Flex application to a multi-screen application that will work in Flash, Flex, AIR and Android.

3D Tag Cloud for Android

This component is available at FlexDownloads.com

This is of course one of the many components that Flash and Flex developers are porting for use in Android apps. This reinforces the universal appeal for Flash as a multi-screen capable tool that can harvest an initial investment in many ways.

Flex Google Checkout Component

flexcomp — Sun, 23 May 2010 04:20:06 +0000

Google Checkout is a good alternative to PayPal for many businesses. If you own an eCommerce website, selling physical goods or digital downloads, you would in most cases want to support both if not more options. Other payments options that are popular are Moneybookers, Amazon Flexible Payments and of course Credit card acceptance through one of the many merchant processing options.

The Flex Google Shopping cart allows you to accept Google Checkout as a payment option from your Flex website. It uses the Google HTML Name-Value pair API to post the contents of your shopping cart to Google. The cart comes with a rudimentary Product display and examples on how call the Shopping Cart add/delete/update methods.

Clean effects and a lot of useful Ecommerce functionality make this one of the best Flex Google shopping carts in the market.

Flex Google Shopping Cart

Flex Google Search Component

flexcomp — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:32:28 +0000

Google Search has an Ajax API that can be used to execute search directly from the browser to the Google servers without the need for intermediate server side code on your website. Executing a search from Flex or Flash reduces to invoking the Google Search api with the apikey, specifying the type of resultset size you want (full or compact) and parsing the JSON reply.

Sounds simple? We are not quite yet done though. You also need to build a display page for the results, provide navigation capabilities to go to the previous or next page or jump to any page. Invocating the Google Search API, building the clickable search results and the related navigation to more results can be componentized as in this Google Search Flex Component. Some of the nice features of this component are

No server side code
Supports 2 styles – “Compact” space saver and the “Full” style
Customizable Item renderers
AIR capable

It comes with full API documentation and examples so putting a Google Search on your Flex or Flash application is as easy as drag-drop. Since this is a pure Actionscript search with some minor MXML changes, you can make it work from Flex 4 as well. You can get the full specification sheet for this component and jump to the live demo page by clicking here.

Want to use this component just from HTML and not inside Flex or Flash? That works too! just try out the live demo below on this WordPress page…

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

Flex 4 Billboard Slideshow

flexcomp — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:39:02 +0000

The transition between images in a slideshow creates the nice pleasing dynamic effect. Maths lies at the heart of these effects. If you are as old as I am and have driven as much as I have, you will immediately notice the similarity between the transition effect in the slideshow we present below and the billboards you often see as you drive through the many highways. The rotating slices that retire the old advertisement on the billboard and herald the new ones create an urgency to ‘see’ what is coming next before the car goes too ahead and it is too late.

We present a preview here of the Flex slideshow with the Billboard effect where you do not need to worry about missing the next ‘scene’. It works with Flex 3 and Flash Builder 4. A full live preview of this nice Flex Component can be found here.

Flex slideshow for Flex 4 with Billboard transition effect. Actionscript banner rotator

Flex “Smart” Datagrid

flexcomp — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:52:09 +0000

Data visualization in Flex is extremely powerful primarily due to some very strong components in this space like the Data Grid, Advanced Data Grid and the many Charts and Graphs that Flex offers. All of these components are extremely dynamic and user interactive.

At times, there still exists a need to extend these components to do more. Take for example, the fairly consistent need to provide users the ability to show or hide columns in a data grid. This need for personalization is fairly consistent across many implementations. Another common need in a Data Grid or Advanced Data Grid is the need to search for a string in the rather huge data content of a datagrid as it is fairly difficult to visually eyeball specific text by scrolling the Data Grid contents.

The Smart Data Grid is a Flex component that extends the basic Flex Data Grid by adding capability to show or hide columns. It also provides a search box that can be used to search the contents of the data grid. Try this component out by clicking here.

Flex Smart DataGrid