Enter Degrafa: A Flex Graphics Framework
Jason Hawryluk, the creator of the Flex 2 Primitive Explorer, and I are in the process of creating a Declarative Graphics Framework for Flex. We’re calling it Degrafa and we just got the blog up where we’ll be discussing our progress, goals and looking for feedback. We will also be posting examples that will start basic, then gradually get into more complex bits of the Degrafa framework. We’re pretty excited about what we’re putting together and what the framework will be capable of.
The process involves exposing the Flash Graphics APIs up to the MXML level, but the Degrafa framework doesn’t stop at just the Flash APIs available. This may not seem like such a big deal, but it’s amazing thinking of the powerful possibilities this brings into the hands of both developers and designers. There are also, a lot of fundamental reasons why this is a great step toward easier visual design for Flex applications.
Some immediate benefits of bringing this up to the MXML stack are, but not limited to:
- Reuse of graphical assets.
- Visual tooling preperation.
- Less code to write in order to achieve great visual graphics without using another tool, all directly in Flex.
- Readability when compared to ActionScript.
- Dynamic runtime changes to all aspects. Something not available in a SWF or PNG imported asset.
- Complexities of learning ActionScript to reap the benefits of the graphics api’s are far less, allowing visual designers to make use of the available power of the Flash runtime immediately within Flex.
To learn more about Degrafa, check out the Degrafa site: http://www.degrafa.com
August 24th, 2007 at 2:37 am
just a quick question. I’m running up against so many issues trying to develop an svg gis site, differing browsers and plugins, svg being frozen by adobe et cetera. Could degrafa be an alternative? Could I potentially create layers of geographic data (points, lines, polygon primitives), set visible and invisable by the user as required, and streamed from a serverside database? My site does this at the moment to an svg client but as mentioned above development has stagnated due to these issues.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Degrafa could definitely be an alternative. Jason Hawryluk, one of the other developers, has been experimenting with drawing maps with Degrafa. I don’t think he’s gone nearly as detailed as you have. One thing to keep in mind is with more shapes and details the slower the performance. We’re hoping to get a beta out soon.