FlexBook updated, source now available.
March 14th, 2007
[source]: http://demo.quietlyscheming.com/source/Book.zip
[license]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_license
[flexbook]: http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/2007/03/06/new-flex-component-flexbook-repost/
Despite the clear statement in my [previous Flex Book post][flexbook] that the source wouldn’t be available immediately, I’ve been buried under a pile of helpful readers informing me that my ‘download source’ link was broken. I suppose I shouldn’t complain about eager interest, no?
I really wanted to have some time to clean up and document the code, but given the overwhelming interest, I’ve gone ahead and [posted the source for download][source]. I still hope I’ll be able to add a little more documentation in the near future (don’t hold your breath).
The FlexBook source is available under the [MIT Open Source License.][license] It requires Flex 2.0.1. to compile. I’ve tested the zip file somewhat, but if you have any problems compiling, comment here and I’ll get them fixed.
Caveat Emptor :)
### [FlexBook source files][source]
March 14th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Thank you very much
March 14th, 2007 at 9:59 am
The documentation needs cleaning up! :)
Seriously this is amazing, thanks for the source.
March 14th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Beautiful… thanks thanks thanks Ely!!!
March 14th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
the .content property looks interesting? Can you add pages via actionscript?
March 14th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Great component. I put it into an ap I’m working on for a newspaper project. Took me about 5 minutes, including the time it took to download and unzip the source. Your stuff continually amazes.
CS
(I’ll post a link when the story’s published if you’re interested… I also used the SuperImage component)
March 14th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Thanks!
March 14th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
BRAVO!!
March 15th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Great job.Thanks a lot.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:52 am
I love the component – thanks. I have a question about page content. I have a page with a list. The list has several rows and displays a scrollbar. I scroll to the bottom of the list and turn the page. Then, I turn the page back to the list page. I scroll up and the text in the list is all squished. Any ideas on why or how I can make this stop? Thanks!
March 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I was trying to put why’s poignant guide in FlexBook form, but the images wouldn’t show up right.
I wonder why — it uses GIF images like this, http://poignantguide.net/ruby/i/wish.upon.a.beard-1.gif (800×942)
~L
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I thought I’d post a use that I had for the FlexBook, you can see it here: http://www.heraldtribune.com/brokentrust . We used it to display long investigative-journalist stories in short chunks (basically broke the story up every few paragraphs). In general, the smaller page pieces seemed to have a profound effect on the ease of reading and how much of the story people actually read.
The rest of the application, I think, shows how Flex can beat out AJAX for ease of data transfer as well as provide superior interactivity (from detailed and usable charts, to effects that make the experience richer) . Let me know what you think.
I also used the SuperImage within that application, so thanks a bunch for all the work that you do.
CS
March 27th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I put the Flex Book in action this week to advertise an upcoming New York City “stealth-show” for Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.
My partner-in-crime and I created a bit of a comic-book-game to announce the gig to the “Philzone” (an online community of Grateful Dead fans). The game is a spoof on “Where’s Waldo” in which you need to find Reddy Kilowatt (a 1930’s cartoon-character for the power companies who has come to be Phil’s “alternate identity” in our games and animations).
It seemed to be a perfect application to put the Flex Book to the test!
While working with it, I did discover a potential bug. I was using “page” mode to get the “full page” look and feel. When using the turnPageTo() method, I was trying to turn to the first open page. Turning to page “0″ took me to the front cover. Turning to page “1″ took me to the second full page. Turning to page “.5″ took me to the correct page, but it threw all kinds of errors when I tried to flip back to the front cover. It seem to think there should be more pages there. Small bug, and I got around it by inserting a “filler” page, but just wanted to mention it in case you were unaware of it.
While I use Flex every day in my “Day Job”, this was my first Flex game to date.
Just wanted to post a heads-up as I thought you might appreciate it. Thanks for all your work on this. It is a beautiful component! Well done!
March 27th, 2007 at 9:11 am
I completely blew the embedded links on that last post. My sincere apologies! Let me try that again.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:18 am
I put the Flex Book in action this week to advertise an upcoming New York City “stealth-show†for Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.
My partner-in-crime and I created a bit of a comic-book-game to announce the gig to the “Philzone†(an online community of Grateful Dead fans). The game is a spoof on “Where’s Waldo†in which you need to find Reddy Kilowatt (a 1930’s cartoon-character for the power companies who has come to be Phil’s “alternate identity†in our games and animations).
It seemed to be a perfect application to put the Flex Book to the test!
The link to the game.
While working with it, I did discover a potential bug. I was using “page†mode to get the “full page†look and feel. When using the turnPageTo() method, I was trying to turn to the first open page. Turning to page “0″ took me to the front cover. Turning to page “1″ took me to the second full page. Turning to page “.5″ took me to the correct page, but it threw all kinds of errors when I tried to flip back to the front cover. It seem to think there should be more pages there. Small bug, and I got around it by inserting a “filler†page, but just wanted to mention it in case you were unaware of it.
While I use Flex every day in my “Day Jobâ€, this was my first Flex game to date.
The link to our portfolio.
Just wanted to post a heads-up as I thought you might appreciate it. Thanks for all your work on this. It is a beautiful component! Well done!
(My sincere apologies for the previous mal-formed post on the topic!)
March 29th, 2007 at 5:46 am
sorry for my English, but I have some questions. I loaded in flexbook’s content swf files. How can I stopped animation in swf files thought flex? For example, I loaded test.swf in flexbook. My test.swf have 20 frames of animation and I want first stopped animation in file till page of book don’t turned and I want playing my animation after turned. I know, that functions play() and stop() worked only in MovieClip. If I create Image component and loading into swf, my component starting play. Function stop() don’t work. And second question: how can I read value of variable from swf file in flex/apollo application? In last frame I have some variable, e.g. var i:Boolean = true; and I want, that application knew value of this variable.
April 8th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Ely – would like to post a tutorial on how to use your FlexBook component to create a pictorial year book. Please email me if that is ok with your or not ok.
For an example of what I’m working on using your FlexBook component see:
http://www.stfm.org/annualreport/annual07/yearbook/stfm.html
Bruce
April 16th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Thanks for the amazing stuff. I’m curious why Flash elements inside html pages don’t render?
April 24th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Hi…so I am part of a company that is putting together a non profit book for a children’s charity (SIDS)…we thought a simple ‘book’ if it existed would be good on the website. And I found this site and these amazing variations, woohoo! I thought I had half a clue on what specially as you kindly provided the source codes, I even D/L Flex trial, but I have stared at the code and can’t work out what to do! So, if someone can help me get started it would really be great (or even help txt for a dummy) – I thought just a book as a browser with a working form at the end for parents to contact us. Thanks – let me know either way…love your work. David
April 25th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Thanks very much.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I downloaded, unziped and copied the contents of the FlexBook download into a new Flex project. but when I try to run it I get this error “1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: FlexBook.”. What an I doing wrong?
May 16th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Dustin (and Carmen) — it’s hard to answer your question. The implication is that the FlexBook isn’t in your classpath somewhere. Make sure you’ve got the FlexBook class in your classpath, and its position relative to your application file matches its path (i.e., a ‘qs’ folder with a ‘controls’ folder with the FlexBook.as file in it).
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 am
I’m having an error when I try to use a collection as the datasource by doing
content=”{ImagePageCollection}”;
swf: http://www.biculturalfamily.org/testing/flipbook/MllMagViewer_test.swf
source:
http://www.biculturalfamily.org/testing/flipbook/srcviewTest/
I’m using a VERY simple array of just a Canvas with an embedded test image in it.
It seems that FlexBook doesn’t like that the collection is null. I fill the array in the creationComplete handler for the Application.
TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at qs.controls::FlexBook/::fillPage()
at qs.controls::FlexBook/qs.controls:FlexBook::commitProperties()
at mx.core::UIComponent/validateProperties()
at mx.managers::LayoutManager/::validateProperties()
at mx.managers::LayoutManager/::doPhasedInstantiation()
at Function/http://adobe.com/AS3/2006/builtin::apply()
at mx.core::UIComponent/::callLaterDispatcher2()
at mx.core::UIComponent/::callLaterDispatcher()
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 am
Thanks for a great component, Ely :-)
Re: Smythe, about adding pages dynamically/in ActionScript. I found that book.addChild() didn’t work, so I came up with this solution instead:
var content:Array = this.book.content;
content[content.length] = new EmptyPage();
this.book.content = content;
EmptyPage() is my own view btw :-)
Good luck!
May 28th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
This component rocks, however it doesnt seem to support the Repeater component to repeat a dynamic amount of pages (Says it’s not an instance of mx.core.Container). Would i be correct in this?
May 31st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I’m new to Flex, but it looks like a great tool!! I tried to compile your code using the Flex SDK and I got this error:
C:\flexbook\src\app.mxml(151): Error: Could not resolve to a component implementation.
I probably did something wrong when I compiled it, I ran from the command line mxmlc c:/path to your app.mxml file.
Like I said I am very new to this and if it’s too much to explain that’s ok, if you could point me in a direction I can probably get it figured out but thought I would ask!!
Thank you for any help!!
June 1st, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the materials. It is very nice.
However, had the following error message when running “ImagePage”:
TypeError: Error #1006: getInstance is not a function.
at mx.core::Singleton$/getInstance()
at mx.styles::CSSStyleDeclaration$cinit()
at global$init()
at ImagePage$iinit()
Not sure what they mean. Notice that “imagePage” was not in the original applications to build. But I am interested to use the FlexBook to show photos. Thanks for suggestions.
Best,
Fei
June 12th, 2007 at 5:02 am
I don’t often leave comments, but this is awesome and very cool of you to make the source available.
Well done.
July 1st, 2007 at 5:27 pm
do u know how to insert update and delete the data from a datagrid in flex and using coldfusion as the back – end?
there is a wizard for doing that but i wanted something more dynamic and effects for my site. (slider panels, fading effect, bouncing, ease.. etc)
I have been trying this for weeks, please help this pitiful guy… Help is appreciated. =)
July 5th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
[...] Create simple book looking applications with this full-on Flex component. The source is now available! Check out The FlexBook component and the source. Also with Adobe Air as ApolloBook. [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Is there any easy way to limit the DragTile to a single row? Do you have any quick suggestions for how to add a title to BitmapTile and have the drag thumbnail ignore it and drag only the image? I’ll take a closer look at the dodge ball example, but it the first few UIComponents I tried ceased to render the image.
July 28th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Great work! thanks for your effort
It seems some bugs in your demo app “DataDriven”.
Some image data do not show in a FlexBook page
i.e. I saw the source file DataDriven.mxml contants a list of images path, they are the dataprovider of each page of flexbook. but some records are lost, just like some pages lost in a book, eg: page1, page2, page5…..(the page3 & page4 are lost) and once 2 records that provide two faces of one page, that two records are lost.
That’s quite a question…please help….
July 28th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Great work! thanks for your effort
It seems some bugs in your demo app “DataDriven”.
Some image data do not show in a FlexBook page
i.e. I saw the source file DataDriven.mxml contants a list of images path, they are the dataprovider of each page of flexbook. but some records are lost, just like some pages lost in a book, eg: page1, page2, page5…..(the page3 & page4 are lost) and once 2 records that provide two faces of one page, that two records are lost.
That’s quite a question…please help….
July 31st, 2007 at 3:04 am
[...] 31st, 2007 · No Comments The FlexBook of Quitly Scheming has a new AIR version. I can tell you that the Flex version wasawesome, now check and download the AIR version. [...]
August 8th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
I love the work you have done! I’m a pretty much a flex newbie trying to figure out how to had a sound effect on turning the pages.
I would think it has to be pretty simple (using some event listener to play example.mp3 on book.turnpage or something)
If anyone could point me in the right direction on this that would be much appreciated!
August 11th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Lovely app…Great work !!
When i run FullPage.mxml, i get this error – “Error #2044: Unhandled IOErrorEvent:. text=Error #2036: Load Never Completed”…
Is there anything that i am missing? I have all the files in my classpath. What does the error signify ?
September 12th, 2007 at 12:05 am
FullPage.mxml, DataDriven.mxml in the source code does not work properly… Can you update the latest source code with working versions of the same?
September 16th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Nice!! Thank you very much for this component! It really rocks! I was just wondering how I could convert this component into a flash component? What should I do to make this available in the flash authoring tool? How can I make this available in my flash CS3 library?
Thanks again!
Cliburn M. Solano
September 21st, 2007 at 8:26 am
We’re using the component in a flex application that will be resizable by the user and would like the page flip component to take up 100% of the container it is in, while retaining aspect ratio. As the user resizes the application window, the page flipper would resize accordingly and the content (swfs) would resize with the page flipper (again retaining aspect ratio). Is this functionality posible with this component? Thanks, Levi
September 21st, 2007 at 8:27 am
We’re using the component in a flex application that will be resizable by the user and would like the page flip component to take up 100% of the container it is in, while retaining aspect ratio. As the user resizes the application window, the page flipper would resize accordingly and the content (swfs) would resize with the page flipper (again retaining aspect ratio). Is this functionality posible with this component? Thanks, Levi
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 am
Ely,
About a week a go I posted a question about dynamically adding content. I was wondering if you had a chance to review my post. Also do you know of anyway Adobe can work with companies using their technology, sort of a limited partnership of sorts.
Thanks,
William
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I am eager to use this component, but am looking for the documentation. From the zipped file, I see an index.htm and history.htm, and related swf files, but I can’t seem to get them to load in browsers. Thanks.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:53 am
[...] came out of the session was a Flex RSS Picture Book. Using Ely Greenfield’s FlexBook component, the picture book displays images from the keyword’s of the articles description [...]