[pg]: http://polygeek.com/299_adobeflash/flashnews_better-than-a-lego-vagina-award-for-360flex
[orig]: http://www.iparigrafika.hu/pageflip/
[fb]: http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/components/flexbook/
There’s been an interesting little discussion going on in [the comments of this blog post on PolyGeek][pg] about the [FlexBook component][fb] — mostly pointing out the relationship between this component and the previous flash-authoring based versions, and questioning what value Flex is adding to the effect.
To Tink and the others who pointed out the history of the flip-book…of course, you are absolutely right. The flip-book effect has been around in flash for years…If you go look at the page of samples I posted, you’ll see the [link to the original][orig] (? not sure if there were earlier implementations) flash flip-book that I used as inspiration.
Does flex add anything to the effect? yes and no. Technically, flex is flash…anything you can do in a flex application, you can do in a flash-authoring project too. So Tink, and others, are right, that rebuliding the flip-book as a flex component doesn’t _technically_ allow anything that wasn’t possible in Flash. In the same way that anything you can do in C++, you can do in assembly. And anything you can do in HTML, you can do with a blank HTML page and a whole lot of javascript. But there are a lot of people out there who used C++ (and still do) who weren’t interested in delving into the depths of assembly, and lots of people who want to save time by describing a web page declaratively through HTML rather than building it line by line from Javascript. In the same way, there are many developers out there who would love to (and would pay to!) take advantage of the incredible visual abilities flash has to offer, without having the time or the skillset to dive deep into the traditional flash authoring workflow.
Flex has a different design center than flash, and makes some things easier and some things harder(?) Actually, I don’t really think the technology makes anything harder…except, perhaps, publishing tiny SWFs. The functionality the Flex SDK provides is pretty additive to what the core player API gives you, so I do believe (and have made it a bit of a mission to evangalize the fact that ) anything you can do in flash, you can also do in flex. But certainly the lack of tooling support for things like drawing and timeline animations makes some things more difficult.
But I think publishing a flex component version of the flip-book, and a whole bunch of other techniques from flash’s storied history does in fact add huge value. There’s a lot of incredibly talented individuals out there who know how to create amazing visual effects with actionscript and the timeline. There’s a whole lot more incredibly talented developers out there who really do not have the skill-set to create those effects, but would really like to use them in their flex applications. Flex’s component model, framework, styling and skining system, templating and item renderers, and most importantly, MXML — the glue that brings all together — are explicitly built around the idea of code reuse…around the idea that fantastic experiences can result from a collaboration between left brain developers and right brain designers (and cross-brain dev-igners).
So, by all means, full credit where credit is due…to the community of talented flash developers and designers who have spent years creating amazing visual and interactive effects with the flash platform. But let’s recognize the opportunities that exist (including financial…I give my work away free as an evangalism effort, but I believe talented flash dev-igners could make good money selling their services into the flex community) for all of us if the flash community considers bringing some of that creativity to bear on the growing flex ecosystem.
March 14th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Extremely well said. You’re doing a fantastic job building the bridge between Flash creativity and the Flex world. I’m sure that the more ‘classic Flash’ examples we see revamped in Flex, the greater the interest of traditional Flash developers/designer’s will be in applying their skills to Flex applications. Knowing it can be done is a great first step toward going out and actually giving it a try.
Keep pumping it out. Cheers.
March 15th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Ely, I’m glad you made this a post here on your site and didn’t leave it buried in the comments on mine.
I’d like to say it again, thanks for the fantastic work and contribution to the community.
March 15th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I’ve been looking into the whole issue of Flex/Flash integration recently and a few things worry me, namely the inability of AS1 or AS2 .swfs to directly communicate with AS3 .swfs (I know there are workarounds), and also the rule that Flex requires all .fla ActionScript to be externalised in .as files as otherwise it’ll be ignored – this seems especially relevant to design assets you’d normally receive from a design team (where they include stop and play commands on keyframes).
Any thoughts on the above? Are you using Flash and Flex together now, and if so do you have any pointers/guidelines?
March 15th, 2007 at 11:01 am
This issue confuses me (Flex/Flash novice). I want to design a complex component, akin to an imagemap of brain regions, but I can’t figure out what to use. Flash has the drawing tools but the timeline isn’t appropriate.. Flex is web-integrated but building custom components seems less simple.
Any advice or sites that discuss this?
March 16th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Every successful technology appears will trigger the renewing of products, and one of the most important reason is reduce the cost.
Ely already made some beautiful stuff(of course including flexbook) and share them with us, it is very helpful!
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:43 am
To make the history of flash book more clear, I believe that Perfect Fools was the first ones who made the Flash Book — they had it complete and online no later than Apr, 05 2002.
Their flash book had the fixed angle and was not so advanced, but it worked good (and had the basic transparency support) (I’ve been insipred by their work and even made my own version in 2002).
Ely, what I especially love in your implemetation is styles applied to the book in very simple way.
April 12th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I love most of all new version of the flash book. I think this is a clear example why it good to spread open source. To let people get inspired and continuing developing a good idea. My version was not the best one, but maby the first. people have said it couple of times. I have now idea if its true. I only know that i hadn’t seen it before I made my verion back in 2002. Keep up the good work!
Best
Tony Högqvist
Creative Director
http://www.perfectfools.com
April 15th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
First i have to say…thanks a lot QS for that flexbook- component, it came like something from …uh…heaven? But i don
t agree with your statement: »anything you can do in a flex application, you can do in a flash-authoring project too«...for i wonder: why have all the crafted Flash-Designers wasted most of their inspiration on nitty-witty animation popup-garbage? Im really thankful that the »good core« of the multimedia-power of the flash player is now in the hand of a company (Adobe) who has some common sense. And I think (indeed) that with Flex 2 you could have the kind of killer application that gives Redmond sleepless nights…(Yeazz..im a believer;-)For example...look at the code of all the thousands games you find on the net... i have looked at it and most of the code is...uh...kinda »grindhouse«. For example...im developing a very ambitious project, that is: a website for disabled children, who can only use one switch, no mouse, no keyboard, the site shall contain:games and stuff for learning etc. so I thought: OK…Flash will do it. Flash wont...Not any of the dozen or so games I explored could be made truly accessible, not even a simple puzzle in Flash was available which didnt need mouse interaction…And then I was ..uh…saved by Flex. After making my first games in Flex I found your Flexbookcomponent and thought…wouldn`t it be cool to have virtual books you could navigate with a single switch…it took me a week or so to reverse-engineer your code and now I have a flaccessbook which can be easily filled by teachers or parents of disabled children with content, without even understanding some line of code, all is done by one little xml-file.So truly…i doubt if Flash 9 can keep the promise Flex 2 has made…
My version of the flexbookcomponent which is completely single-switch based (use the SPACE-KEY) once your browser has setFocus (IE does it automatically via the well-known JAVA-Script workaround) can be found here.
keep on moving!
best wishes,
Andreas
April 21st, 2007 at 3:29 am
Thanks so much for this awesome component. I am interesting in using it for one of my projects. One issue I am running into is when I apply a background image to one of the page components. Every time I try to drag a page that has a background image, the image flickers. it is as if the pages reinitialize themselves when the mouse rolls over one of their hot spots. Do you know how I might be able to avoid this flicker effect on background images.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Strange that I should chance across this post today of all days. Yesterday I posted about another Flex Flip Book written in Flex by Ruben.
As Rostislav said, it looks like Perfect Fools were the first to do this in Flash, closely followed by Pixelwit in May 2002.
He has a nice little summary/history here
June 20th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Hey Ely, sorry I never realised this post was here.
One thing I want to make clear is that I’m not dissing the work you did on this.
The point I was trying to make (and it goes back to when Flex 2.0 was originally released http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=61) is that its bad practice to be using Flex where its not required and having the extra overhead of the framework. From the examples shown there was no real need for the Flex framework (except obviously thats what it was built around) and it could have been done as an AS 3.0 project, but if each page was laced with Flex components (which is how many people who come across this component may implement it) then it would make perfect sense.
I felt that many people would come across this and think ‘wow look what you can do with Flex’ and therefore go down the road of using it, when it really wasn’t that neccessary for the project they had in mind as Flash (AS 2.0 or 3.0) or and AS 3.0 project would have been more suitable.
Did i just dig a deeper hole? ;)
October 4th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Hi, I am an as programmer and ms based programmer. Recently come across flex and I go WOW. I firmly believe the C#s, VBs, .nets are over. I will influence my clients to adopt flex. So I am very interested in your AIR/Apollo application.
I have just downloaded the air but during installation, it said the version AIR is no longer supposrted. Can you help?
October 16th, 2007 at 8:21 am
I really like the fish eye component but I can figure out how to get my images into it. can you help me?
October 20th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Do you think that a market will develop for Flex widgets in the way AJAX widgets have developed? For me, this is the largest anti-adoption factor – I do not want to develop widgets, just use them to solve my domain problems.