Dynamic UI Components (with source)

wwf Back in February 2008 I wrote an application called PostACard which ended up winning the 360|Flex API Contest.  I’m really proud of what I was able to create (less than 20 hours total development time) and I have always wanted to go back to it and see if I can extend it further.

Recently I have been playing around with the source code some more and in particular have been trying to see if I could reuse the movable component libraries I wrote.  As part of this I have tidied the code up a bit and have extracted it from the rest of the application.  Check out the demo below.

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Accurate Car Simulation in Flex

car_top2 The demo below came from a technical challenge I set myself a few weekends ago.  I often like to set myself small challenges like this… I guess it’s kind of like doing a cross word puzzle.

The challenge this week was to accurately simulate the movements of a car in 2D.  Most people don’t realize this, but when a car turns it is rotating about a point outside itself, and that point is perpendicular to the wheels.  It’s a little hard to explain, but if you check out the demo below then it all should become clear.

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How to Draw in Flex

pencil Eye candy is an important, if often over looked, part of any Flex application.  Unfortunately for me, I am much more of a developer than a designer and this has often left me with the short end of the eye candy stick.

The strength of being a developer however is in the custom functionality we can add.  Recently I have put together a DrawableOverlay Flex component which can be used to allow the user to annotate/draw on any part of the application.

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