Mini-review & Competition Foundation Flex for Designers

All Flex applications look the same—a blue-gray background and silver-skinned components—right? That doesn't have to be the case, though. This book shows you how to ensure that your Flex 2 and 3 projects stand out from the crowd and provide your users with an application that is both visually stunning and beautifully functional.

Flex Builder coupled with the Adobe Creative Suite (CS3) is a powerful combination, providing all the tools you need to create compelling, vibrant interfaces. This book guides you through creating applications with Flex Builder, designing layouts in Fireworks, creating custom skins for your components in Photoshop and Illustrator, and using CSS to enhance the appearance of your rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Overview

You'll learn how to efficiently use and style states, enabling you to switch between "pages", thus adding real depth to your applications. You’ll also learn how to build web forms that are intuitive to use, helping your users provide the information you’re after.

Your Flex applications no longer have to be contained within a web browser window—Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) enables the creation of desktop applications. This book explores giving an AIR application a truly custom shape and style, leaving the rectangular form that defines most applications far, far behind.

Flex isn't just for programmers; it’s time for designers to take back RIAs and show what that "R" really stands for. The Internet is not just about collecting data—it’s about visual communication and giving people a rich user experience, and that’s what designers do best.

In this book you'll learn how to

  • Create fluid layouts for Flex applications
  • Use CSS to change the appearance of components
  • Use Photoshop and Flash to create custom skins for Flex components
  • Create a custom-shaped desktop application (AIR)
  • Use Fireworks to simplify layout and the production process

Summary of Contents

  • Chapter 1: Introducing Flex and Flex Builder 3
  • Chapter 2: Styling
  • Chapter 3: Working with States
  • Chapter 4: Flex and Fireworks
  • Chapter 5: Flex with Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Chapter 6: Flex Builder and Flash
  • Chapter 7: ActionScript in Flex
  • Chapter 8: Flex Photo Gallery
  • Chapter 9: Flex Video Gallery with Drag-and-Drop
  • Chapter 10: Exploring Flex Charting
  • Chapter 11: Creating Forms: The ""Will Flex for Food" registration Page
  • Chapter 12: Flex and Air
  • Index

Who is this book for?

This book is useful for designers who want to start creating RIAs with Flex. Still, the reader is supposed to have a little bit of code knowledge and experience with Adobe designer tools to get out the most of this book.

Conclusion

Foundation Flex for Designers is an easy-to-read-and-follow practical guide that teaches how to create RIAs with Flex Builder 3. The book covers the most important design issues of how to control the look and feel of a Flex app with CSS and custom skins, using Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Fireworks, and make it more dynamic, visually interesting, and easier to navigate. It is supposed that the user is familiar with the basics of XML, ActionScript and CSS. 

Although the book has some errata (the Beta versions had been changed by Adobe), we recommend this book as worthy for reading to any designer who wants to explore the Flex framework and delve into creating effective Flex apps applying diverse design tools and imagination.

Competition

We've got a brand new mini-review and competition of Foundation Flex for Designers. The friendly people of friends of ED are giving away 5 books!

All you need to do, to enter the competition is, download the sample PDF and finish the following sentence:

"By skinning your components, you can..."

Send your answer to this e-mail address, before Wednesday the 15th of April 2008. Don't forget to include your post address and phone number (required for international shipping) in the e-mail.

Luba Sirakova

Luba SirakovaLuba Sirakova is happy to work as a Content Manager for Dynamic Zones – the company behind the zones network.

Luba graduated from Technical University Sofia with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer systems and technologies. Now she masters her Master`s in HR.

See All Postings From Luba Sirakova >>

Comments

Be the first to write a comment

You must me logged in to write a comment.