ScaleNine

When I first started ScaleNine I envisioned it as a community effort to bring skins, themes, and overall Flex visual UI enhancements to interested developers. As the knowledge base of Flex grows I suspect this may be the case and it seems as more and more developers get there hands on Flex, the more individuals there are who are eager to contribute to the community.

With that said, here’s a theme based on Windows Vista submitted by Bhavin Padhiyar. He approached this theme using bitmap assets and specifying the 9-slice grids in the CSS file. This is great because it shows another method of skinning a Flex application. He also provided the Photoshop file in case you’d like to modify some of the assets. Thanks Bhavin!

See this theme in action here (view source enabled), or download the PSD and source from the ScaleNine homepage.

You can also try this theme out without downloading any files by using this URL in the mx:Style source in the MXML of your application:

http://try.scalenine.com/vistaBlue/vistaBlue.css

I also made the Darkroom Theme available using this method:

http://try.scalenine.com/darkroom/darkroom.css

From time to time I need a quick way to reference or gain better understanding of certain features available in Flex and fortunately there are some great tools to do this. Here’s a round up of several explorers that I’ve bookmarked over time:

Component Explorer

Style Explorer (Also available as a Fireworks CS3 Extension)

Style Explorer with Kuler Import

Transtions & Effects Explorer

Charting Explorer

Primitive Explorer

Filter Explorer

Resize Manager Explorer (for custom component)

Enhanced Button Skin Explorer (for custom component)

Reflection Manager/Explorer

Distortion Effects Explorer 

Kuler : Color Explorer? (Also accesible in Illustrator CS3 under Window > Adobe Labs > kuler)

The Speaker-to-Session list for the 360|Flex Seattle Conference has been posted. I have yet to secure a flight and lodging, so if anyone that’s going to the conference is flying out of Los Angeles or Orange County, CA let me know. Maybe we can meet up.

I caught the announcement the other day on FlexCoders that a new version of the SearchCoders Dashboard was available. Tom Bray and Robert Cadena have managed to pack in some great features which brings the tally to a number of ways to get the info your looking for regarding Flex.

With information at your finger tips, like mail list tracking, RSS feed pulls, Chat, and Search, your bound to find what you’re looking for. There is also a number of ways to personalize the app by adding RSS feeds, creating notes, and creating favorite.

It looks as though the SearchCoders Dashboard is in constant development to bring even more information to your desktop. If you have any ideas let these guys know. Very nice.

Check out the Screencast

Download Page

When I first started ScaleNine there was an immediate request for a theme based on Adobe Lightroom when it was in beta. I added the suggestion to the list and now finally got around to putting a theme together.

Initially I was just going skin the basic components, but as I got into it I started creating additional skins resembling those components in Lightroom. I ended up with multiple background, scroll bar, toggle button, combo box and button bar skins. I almost went into icons, but those are specific to Lightroom and I figured people would just use their own.

Also, to see how far I could go with the skin I mocked up what I thought Lightroom would look like in Flex. I was able to get real close without creating any custom components, but the best solution would be taking the time to create them for areas like the expanding/scrolling accordian-like area, putting a scroll bar on the left versus the right, etc. I just put VBoxes inside Canvases inside HBoxes inside… At least it will give anyone wanting to use the theme an idea where to use the different skins.

Almost everything is collapseable, like the trays and content areas in Lightroom, but I didn’t spend too much time getting into effects so they’re a little buggy in some instances.

Check out the Darkroom Theme (view source enabled) or download it and get the FLA from the Scalenine homepage. Happy Cinco de Mayo!