Flex Stuff by Gilles Guillemin

UPDATED (07/04/2010):
I’ve updated the example (and the source code) to reflect some things added in the comments and also added a new stepFade property (see the example).

Finally, I’ve also updated the example “content” so it’s more in phase with the season…

Last month I already showed you how cool Flex 4′s new layout system is with my TimeMachine Layout. Pretty much at the same time I knocked together another example, the good ol’ CoverFlow but with my new gig in Paris for Keytree/SAP/Publicis I didn’t get the chance to publish it until now.

Here it is! As usual, just click on the picture to launch it and right-click to see the source.

Flex 4: CoverFlow Layout (click to Launch)

Same disclaimer as for the TimeMachine layout: it’s not optimized, some things can certainly be done a different/better way, but at least it works reasonably well and gives another idea of how easy it is to implement complex layouts with Flex 4.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas/Happy New Year!

The new layout architecture in Flex 4 is pretty cool. It’s much much simpler to implement complex layouts than what was possible with Flex 3. So the other day I was asked to develop a TimeMachine-like layout. It eventually ended up being done with Flex 3 but before that I had a chance to give a try with the new layout system.

So I picked a bit of Evtim’s Wheel layout, added a bit of Ryan Campbell’s 5 3D Layouts (who got himself inspired by Evtim’s example), blended the whole thing in my own recipe and ended up with something I thought I should share (source is available by right-clicking on the demo after launching it):

Flex 4: Animated TimeMachine Layout (click to Launch)

It’s not optimized, some things can certainly be done a different/better way, but at least it works reasonably well and gives another idea of how easy it is to implement complex layouts with Flex 4.

[Edit: there's a workaround for the preferences issue here]

I’ve been literally sucked up into a black hole of work recently (hence the obvious lack of activity on FlexStuff.co.uk), but not to the point I couldn’t check out the brand new Flash Builder 4 Beta 2 and its counterpart Flash Catalyst Beta 2 (like all good geeks I like novelties). So I took a couple of hours to see how the two of them behaved with CatalystBuilderSync and for what I’ve seen so far it’s still all good, with the usual caveats (not all your Flash Builder 4 code will necessarily play well in Catalyst). It looks like my approach remains entirely valid and I suspect it’ll remain valid even after Catalyst 1.0 release, but I can be wrong and obviously Adobe doesn’t warmly encourage this approach according to Andrew Shorten’s (excellent) article: Exploring Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflows:

Other workflows

Whilst not an official list of recommended workflows, the approaches described in this article are all supported within the current versions of the Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder.

There are a number of third-party tools and alternative workflows that you might like to consider as you work with Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder; these can often improve productivity further for advanced developers. Note, however, that some of these tools may use unsupported or non-recommended approaches that may not work with future versions of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder.

So CatalystBuilderSync works well, BUT (of course there has to be a but) unfortunately Adobe limited one thing in Catalyst: there’s no right-click available anymore in Catalyst’s code view. Which means you can’t manually refresh the content of your project folder nor access Catalyst’s preferences in order to activate the Automatic Refresh (as explained in this previous post). There are a couple workarounds (like switching back and forth between design and code view or saving Catalyst project then choosing “Revert” in the file menu) but it’s a bit of a shame as we’re not children and I don’t really see the point of removing this functionality (now I’m also doomed to use the system’s default browser which is all but a convenience for me). I guess there must be somewhere in Catalyst some .ini file to edit (after all Catalyst is just another Eclipse distro) but I must say I don’t have a clue where this might be.
I’ll keep searching when I have the time but if someone has a suggestion I’d love to hear it. Now the good thing is CatalystBuilderSync is still working and it’s even more useful now with all the new Catalyst’s functionalities.

Like some others I’ve been working a lot recently in trying to improve the Adobe Flash Catalyst / Flash Builder workflow. I came up with a partial solution not so long ago, but it wasn’t exactly seamless and it most definitely needed a tool to act as a middle-man, to simplify synchronization between both softwares.

This is that tool: CatalystBuilderSync

And more than a long story, the second of a series of screencasts I’ve recorded yesterday should give you a good taste of what CatalystBuilderSync is capable of…

Remember, it’s a very early alpha version, so bugs, hiccups and other funny things are to be expected (and to be reported so I can fix them at some point).

You can download the latest version and give some feedback (I really need them) here:

CatalystBuilderSync 0.6.2

And please spread the word, I feel like this tool should be of interest to many of you.