Flex Pasta » 2009 » October
While still a work in progress, a new set of features will exist for text layout in Flex 4/Flash 10. The package name for the text layout library is flashx.*, which is a shift from traditional Flex packages, but it looks like it will be open source. Here is a demo with a simple slider that changes the width of the first column and the text automatically lays itself out across multiple components. While I couldn’t get it to work yet(still beta), the final product will allow html formatting(actually a limited number of html tags). For applications that are heavy on content related material, it will be huge that text can be strung across multiple components from one string variable. The string will automatically re-size and position itself dynamically. Now while I am not doing these features justice, here is a small example of the layout.
Progress Bars via the mx:ProgressBar tag are easy to use in Flex. Unlike some kind of progress bars that can drive anyone insane….
Flex progress bars are easy to implement and great for usability. When there is a long database query or chance for network latency, a progress bar is always a good idea to keep the user informed that something is happening. Those with an artistic ability can create a custom progress image to use on a progress bar, but if not, the built in one is still a viable option. There are two main types of progress bars included in the Flex SDK. Ones that use percentages to show completeness and ones that use an indeterminate/unknown to give the user indication of activity. Both are implemented in the mx:ProgressBar tag/class.
The percentage progress bar is used directly with the mode property, which has three options, event, polled, and manual. This is used in conjunction with the source property which the progress bar can use to automatically update the progress bar.