FlexMDI is an excellent floating panel implementation.

If you have tried other floating panel implementations then you know they leave much to be desired. DragPanel is awkward to work with, and does not provide much functionality. SuperPanel is very slow and buggy. SuperPanelPlus is faster than SuperPanel, but does not address the bugs.  All of these are difficult to extend since they are monolithic.

FlexMDI is part of FlexLib, but you would only know that from a diligent hunt for a good floating window manager. FlexMDI is not listed in the FlexLib component list, although the FlexMDI documentation is included in the FlexLib ASDoc.  The older FlexMDI documentation on the FlexMDI Google code project page uses different package names, so beware.  I have logged a bug report.  Both FlexLib and FlexMDI are open source projects.  Work on the standalone FlexMDI project has been discontinued.  FlexLib has not had a release is at a year, and it is due for a refresh.

The primary sample application is available from the original FlexMDI project site.  Unfortunately, it requires some fussing to make it compile because it has a bad reference to the library swc.  I replaced the project reference to flexlib.swc, and modified the imports from flexmdi.* to flexlib.mdi* and flexlib.mdi.containers.*.  Be sure to reference the FlexLib asdoc if you attempt this.

If you have need to write ActionScript that manipulates floating windows, you should read Ben Clinkinbeard's blog to get started.  Here is a more advanced sample application that I wrote, which features nested floating windows and an example of how to locate arbitrary components in the title bar.  Source code is here.

Late breaking news: I just discovered what appears to be another resizable Panel component, also called SuperPanel (let's call this one "SuperPanel III").  It seems to be better than the other SuperPanel and its derivatives.  Right-click on the demo to view source.  I'm going to stick with FlexMDI because it was implemented in such a flexible manner, and is part of Flexlib, which I use in many of my Flex projects.

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Mike Slinn
Independent full-service software contractor and author
http://slinnbooks.com
http://mslinn.com

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