Factum Vicesimus Quartus » component

Flex book component (alpha)

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 06:59:35 +0000

Sitting first row (next to Ruben), I have watched my fellow trainee Ruben Swieringa working on his pageflip book in Flex for the last few months now. And I must say that it’s already the best pageflip book out there, as far as I know. It includes features as pageflipping, hardback option for every page, tearing-a-page-out functionality, automatic flipping, support for transparent pages and a lot more. Go check it out by clicking on the preview-image below. Read more overhere…

Very impressive Ruben! Keep up the great work!

Reflection Manager 1.0

Wietse Veenstra — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:31:27 +0000

I have updated my Reflection Manager to version 1.0. I have implemented a blurring option like suggested in the comments on my previously posted version (0.9). I have also built in the functionality to update the reflection when its target component is dragged or resized. Furthermore I made some minor updates to improve the performance even a little more. I hope this will be of some good use to you. Let me know when you use it, what you think of it and/or if you have found a bug or have other suggestions on improving it. Thnx!

Open the Reflection Explorer (right-click for the source).
Open the source-view directly.

ReflectionManager v0.9

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:59:00 +0000

<– I have updated the Reflection Manager. The new version can be found overhere –>

Last week I needed a reflection at the bottom of the application I was working on. After searching the internet for a while I found some reflection classes on my favorite Flex resource, Flexbox. But after testing 2 of these I saw that the smoothness and speed of my application was decreasing drastically. So I took some time to figure out the structure of the reflection and came up with some ideas on improvements that I could built in. I wrote a new Reflection Manager, which I think is a little more efficient in some ways. I separated the bitmapdata for the alpha gradient and the component copy so that I can update them separately and then combine them into 1 bitmapdata by using the copyPixels method. I did this so it only draws the alpha gradient bitmapdata once and only updates the component data when the Flex UpdateEvent occurs. When the component or the reflection is resized, it also updates the alpha gradient data. This saves quite some CPU power.

The height of the bitmapdata is equal to the height given by the user for the reflection and not the entire height of the component your reflecting. Less pixels are drawn this way which you don’t see after all. There are still some improvements to be made but it’s a good start I think. Check it out!

Open the Reflection Explorer.
View source.

Let me know what you think, suggestions on how to improve the Reflection Manager are welcome as always.

Flex SuperPanel v1.5

Wietse Veenstra — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:17:38 +0000

I updated my SuperPanel extension to version 1.5. It now includes focusing of panels, the focused panel has a different color, double clicking on the header to collapse/open the panel, and maximizing the panel to the full screen size. If a panel is being dragged it is 50% transparent now for better visibility. There’s also a button on the bottom of the stage to add new panels to the test-stage to further explore the functionality. I didn’t get the minimize funcionality working yet but it’s certainly planned for a future update.

View the demo here (right click to view source).
View the source here.

Future updates include:
- Minimize to the bottom of the stage
- The option to change the title of the panel
- The option for panel not to overlap eachother

Ofcourse suggestions are always welcome and let me know if you find any bugs.

Flex SuperPanel

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:06:07 +0000

<– there is an update of the SuperPanel which can be found overhere –>

I really like to work with the Panel component in my Flex projects, but it lacks some functionality I use quite often so I extended it which resulted in the SuperPanel component. The SuperPanel can be dragged around on the stage, it can be closed, collapsed and resized. I have some additional updates planned but I wouldn’t want to keep this from you so here is the first version. I hope it will be of some good use to you.

View the demo here (right click to view source).
View the source here.

Future updates:
- Different header color for focused panel.
- Click to content area to focus panel.
- Doubleclick on header to collapse the panel.
- Minimize to the bottom of the stage.

If you find any bugs or have any other suggestions, please let me know.