Is there a way to easily specify on which sides a border is drawn for Flex 4's Spark BorderContainer?
I found this: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2956325
But that uses MX styling which seems like a hack. Is there a better or 'correct' way without having to build a skin? It seems incredibly silly to build a skin for a 'Bordered' component when this is a very common use case.
Thanks for any pointers!
Many of the spark components are designed to be lightweight, so I'm not surprised that BorderContainer doesn't have the same bells/whistles as its mx counterpart. If I was in your situation I would create a simple skin that uses Lines instead of a border on each of the sides so you can configure the widths however you like. Sounds like a hassle, but much of the flexibility of spark components is dependent upon creating custom skins.
Related
I had experience with Twitter Bootstrap and Foundation, and I personally think the only thing I want to use is their grid system. Other features are just bloated.
So I read about the prospect of a grid layout. All of the articles I found are oriented toward an 'artistic' explanation (golden ratio ect). I am a coder at heart, I need a clear & logical reason to use a grid layout (for example: 'columns can be easily stacked on top of each other on mobile screen, and expand horizontally on larger screens'). Can someone give me the pros and cons of applying a grid system to my website? Personally do you think using a grid system is good?
If the answer is yes, should I use a premade grid system like from Twitter Bootstrap/Foundation or just make one for my own? All of the other features are unnecessary for me an irrelevant to my problem.
Thanks! :D
I agree with #kunalbhat that this might not be the best area to ask this but since you did I will try to answer it.
The grids are designed allow for speed and adaptability. Speed in multiple senses. The first part of the speed is the speed of writing the code. You can easily get the layout you want when you are using the grid system and everything aligns correctly. You don't have to remember your tables and columns and col-spans, etc.
The second speed is modifying your code. Inevitably you will need to go back and make changes, with a grid this is easily to do. Changing a col-md-7 to a col-md-6 easily makes a little tweak in the layout of your page that can easily be tracked and performed.
You mentioned responsive design, both Bootstrap and Foundation have responsive grids. The grids will snap to different sizes based on the viewport size. However you have control as well. For example if you want something to take 1/12th the screen in desktop, 1/4th on a tablet, and 100% on a phone that is easily done with Bootstrap and Foundation, both have grid classes that target specific viewports.
The also provide visibility classes based on those viewports.
For the "bloated" part that is easily solved. Using SCSS you can easily only import portions of a library. For example for one project I was on I only imported the Grid and it was considerably smaller.
I happen to think that this is a SO question, simply because of one of the main cons of CSS grid systems: semantic.
I think semantic is important for a web developer and having a class named col-md-7 is not the most semantic thing to do.
But I like grids, because they are easy and quick to use, so I started to use LESS. Because it allows me to use variables and functions(mixins) in CSS, I can build my own grid system on my CSS rather then on my HTLM.
You can start on Frameless and customize your own 'classes'.
I found this component on the internet (http://www.wietseveenstra.nl/files/flex/SuperPanel/v1_5/MainView.html) and those panels are just great. Unfortunately, that source-code doesn't suit well on Flex 4. Spark components works differently on changing their structure (adding buttons to the padding top, etc) and working with the MX components doesn't work properly the Drag function and it looks ugly.
I'd like to know if anyone have a link for a similar component already done in Flex 4 or any path that I could take to be able to build it myself.
I have plenty of experience with ActionScript, but almost none with CSS/Styling on Flex or Flex 4.
Thanks.
Have you taken a look at the MDI component that is part of flexlib?
Since I new with CSS, I just started to work with CSS Grid system. I would like to know if are there any technical issues in use CSS grids? I mean, which are the reasons for you to not use grid?
Thanks
Flexibility
Once you start using the grid, you are stuck with it. Any other issues you might wind up finding you will have to conform to.
In my opinion (and every other designer I've talked to) it is far easier to simply define your own columns and default sizes as classes and apply them as-needed. A custom grid if you will. Then changing the styling is as easy as changing a line or two of CSS, instead of either re-generating the grid system or redesigning the site and sacrificing in order to use the grid.
I'm a fan resets and some minor love from Blueprint (especially the Typography), but that's about it.
I've just started using object oriented CSS (OOCSS). I'm really enjoying it because it provides a very basic and minimalistic grid system. It allows you to create relative sized grids by dividing an element into halves, thirds, fourths, or fifths. The divided elements are infinitely nestable.
OOCSS is more of a philosophy than a framework. It's all about how you extend a very basic foundation.
Check out these links:
http://oocss.org/
http://developer.yahoo.net/blogs/theater/archives/2009/03/website_and_webapp_performance.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6sAm7CLoCQ
The only real reason is that they can lead to bloated markup, sometimes you have to do some serious nesting depending on the layout and desired effects+flexibilty.
They also lead to excessive class name lists on elements. However, you can avoid this at least if you move the CSS to semantic classes/ids before deploying... but thats can be alot of extra work. Blueprint is the excpetion here because it has acommand line tool to allow you to apply the rules from its framework classes to semantic selectors.
Overall i generally use them because its alot easier to teach a designer how to use a grid template. That why im not do alot of production art tasks when i go to slice things down. It jsut makes the whole process smoother IMO.
If your site has a column layout AND repeatable design patterns throughout the site... then there aren't any reasons not to include a grid. A grid adds: organization, proportion and alignment to your page. So why not keep that consistent? There is no reason.
Just don't Overuse A Grid
Some people say a grid is inflexible? That's not totally true - you can use it where you need it. You can always remove it or adjust. Just don't overuse it.
It depends on the grid system. Most grids have a fixed amount of columns, which restrict you in how you create your layout. For example, they don't allow you to combine 30%/30%/40%, 50%/50%, 25%/75% and whatever other combinations you can think of.
Some grid systems also don't allow nesting. That means you can't use a grid element as a grid for child elements in those grid systems, which makes it a lot more difficult for many layouts to be coded to HTML.
Also, some grid systems use techniques that don't work in older browsers. Before you use a grid system, you should always make sure it supports the browsers you need to support with your project.
There are frameworks out there without such restrictions, though. Cascade Framework, in fact, has a grid system far more flexible than that of any other framework out there and works fine in both IE6-8 and modern browsers alike.
Do you know any simple drawing libraries with align support (one component to other, also align to grid)
I would like to implement simple editor of wall configuration in the apartments, by the way.
Or, may be, there is no such component and is better to use Graphics class?
You can try http://www.rogue-development.com/objectHandles.html
Is there a preferred way to handle animation when using Flex -- For instance, if I want to render a ball and bounce it around the screen?
If you're building a Flex application, you should use Flex's native Effect classes. They're probably already compiled into your app, since the core components use them, and you won't increase your SWF size with duplicate functionality like you would if you used another library. For simple animations, either mx.effects.AnimateProperty or mx.effects.Tween should work well.
If you're working on a regular ActionScript project (without the Flex framework), then I concur with the answer given by Marc Hughes. However, if that's the case, then please don't say you're using Flex because that implies that you're using the Flex framework and it can be very confusing. If you mean Flex Builder, then please use the full name to avoid potential misunderstandings.
You can't always use Flex's effect class with plain sprites. Certain effects expect your target object (the object to be tweened) to implement IUIComponent interface, while others don't. So you can either use mx.effects.Tween, or if you must use the one of the effects classses, you will need to coerce your sprite into a UIComponent.
Another option is to use one of the tween packages suggested above or roll your own with goasap!
goasap
I prefer to use a tweening library for things like this. Check these out:
Tweener
TweenLite / TweenMax
KitchenSync
I've had good luck actually using the first two, and have read great things about the last one.
You can use mx.effects.AnimateProperty even though your target is not a UIComponent.
If the tween you want to acheive is a simple one (Move, Resize, Fade etc) this saves you writing the boiler plate code that mx.effects.Tween requires.