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The other day I needed to create a few demo apps for one of my projects and was dreading dusting off my Flex skills to create some quick UIs. Don't get me wrong, I like Flex but sometimes I just need to do something quick and dirty in AS 3. That's when I remembered MinimalComps - the minimal AS 3 UI Component set by Keith Paters over at Bit-101. It was exactly what I needed; a simple, nice looking component set, that was small and easy to set up! You should give it a try, here is screen shot of what they look like:
Comes with:
Look at how easily you can set them up. Simply define your component then supply a parent (a nice shortcut so you don't have to call addChild after), x, y, and then a handler event. If the component has text you will most likely pass in a label string before the default handler. Lets take a quick look:
var label:Label = new Label(panel, 20, 40, "This is a Label");
Need a button?
var pushbutton:PushButton = new PushButton(panel, 20, 60, "This is a Button", onPush);
How about a vertical slider?
var vSlider:VSlider = new HSlider(panel, 130, 20, onValueChange);
Since each of the component use built in Events, capturing them is straight forward. Sliders dispatch change events and buttons dispatch mouse click events.
If you are looking to quickly mock up some forms, or maybe you just need small, easy to use components you should check them out. Even better, they are distributed under the MIT Licenses and you you can check the source out from svn here:
http://minimalcomps.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
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"quick and dirty" says it all. Buy FlexBuilder 3 and you can knock up skinnable good looking UIs in minutes. And guess what, you can still write AS3 to do funky stuff if you really want to.
Well I use the term "quick and dirty" in a very affectionate way. Regardless, I have mixed feelings about Flex. I am sure we could have an interesting argument about the pros and cons of Flex but I do have two things to say: 1) I have never been fond of Flex's design and 2) I was able to build a nice demo app at around 52k ( 40k of that came from my own framework and if it wasn't a demo I would probably be able to get it even smaller). Now I know you can skin Flex apps but for the most part they all have the same look and feel.
However, I do agree if I was to build something more complex I would quickly move into Flex but as I alluded to, sometimes you just want to prototype it out and not have all the overhead of a larger framework. Just my 2 cents.
Yes, use Flex and you can have the massive overhead of the Flex Framework when all you need is a couple simple controls. yay!
I have to agree with Keith. I'd rather load the bare minimum amount of classes and get to work (
Keith, why would Flex file size be a concern with quick and dirty POCs??
Who gives a crap about overhead if you are just jamming something out? Flex is great because it takes care of all the b.s. associated with adding and laying out controls. I have whipped up Flex UIs in a day that moved projects forward because they displayed complex functionality with very little dev time. Then again, if your comfort zone is pure AS3 then by all means do what you gotta do!
Laying out a UI mockup with AS3 components means you can use Flash instead of Flex, which is still the preferred rapid prototyping tool for many developers.
It's also a component set ideally suited to mockups in Flash. Unless you're using the Wireframe skin in Gumbo, the app will definitely look like a Flex application. And if the final project does not use Flex, well you don't want to sell a mockup to a client where they're expecting one thing and land up getting another. And trust me, some clients, if they can nitpick about the filesize of the POC, they will.
Both Flash and Flex have a "design view" to create layouts, but Flash has designer tools that make it easier to design a mockup. If you have a Wacom tablet you can even make notes and draw functionality diagrams on the mockup, which you can't do in Flex.
It's not for everybody, and I've only used it on a few projects myself, but for those projects where it's suited, using MinimalComps with the Flash IDE saves a lot of hassle.
Honestly I do all of my coding in FDT/FlexBuilder. I never touch the Flash IDE unless I really have to and I kind of feel the same way about Flex. Sure it's quick for some things but when I want to do something specific most of the time I create my own Flex component bypassing the "benefits" of the prebuilt ones. Once you have to work around the framework you have to question if you are using the right tool for the project?
No matter what I build I always pay attention to load time, and file size. It's a force of habit plus my demos are meant to be seen online and distributed with the documentation of my code. Why would I want them to be any bigger then it should be?
It's so good. I'm prefer MinimalComps. Gumbo empty SWF (only empty "application" tag) have more than 550K!
I prefer flash with MinimalComps and FlashCamo.
Thanks guys! ;)
Looks like you get a great selection of tools and there all well laid out. I don't use program like this often enough to stay intune with them, but this looks like something you can just drop in and out of