I have been anxious about some aspects of the flex interface on the site I’m working on right now. I have started and restarted, trying to leverage certain pieces of what I think flex will offer me, and coming across stumbling blocks along the way. Finally mid-week I came to the conclusion that from what I knew of flash, this was something that could be done in flash.. but I wouldn’t be able to do it myself. I got help — and from the way CL approached the problem, I felt vindicated: there was no WAY I’d have been able to do it on my own.
Well today we were talking about it with KS, our resident flash/flex guru, and he showed us how it could be handled in flex. He pointed out the benefits flex would offer, and offered some advice on some of the stumbling blocks I’d encountered. After only a few moments of him time, I think both CL and I wondered if we shouldn’t have given it a try in flex.
I believe we shall: while the flash version will likely go forward in this release, I think we’re both going to look at reengineering the piece. I think it would be a great learning opportunity for us both to do it, and then look at how we each did it, as a learning experiment. KS actually runs the RIA Working Group at work, and he said this could be a great topic of discussion: looking at both versions (all three?) and talking out the pros and cons.
My concern has been ‘not knowing what I don’t know’, that is, not being familiar enough to know the best approach. But perhaps I need to embrace the idea of “getting it done” and learning through the experience. I am very excited about the idea of this being a challenge outside the constraints of a work deadline: just trying to get it done, and seeing how someone else approaches it.
Hi
It’s my first time here and i must say i found your blog on a search on Google and i’m glad i did it :D. I’m starting to develop a portal in flex but i’m still on planing stage and i’m stucked on somethings like:
I’d like to have a menubar but then i see that the menubar has 2 things that make it hard to use or perhaps i don’t know how, the 1st is: I can’t find a way to know when a top level option is clicked because i’ll have some options that don’t require a sub menu.
2nd: I was trying to load icons to my options but i can’t find a way to do it dinamically without having to embed all images because i have a lot of options, more than 100.
So please , could you be kind and if you can, help me on this?
thanks