Skinning Flex controls can be a pain. You need a designer who really knows what they’re doing and you have to embed your assets in your application (or at least I haven’t seen a way around that).
On a current flex project we want some buttons nicely designed by a flash guy. Those buttons should open a popup menu with more buttons on it. (like any standard toolbar)
Requirements:
- Easy way for designer to create graphical buttons.
- A way of using those graphical buttons in a button/popup combination
- Load assets at runtime so they can be swapped out easily (for different languages for instance)
- Include keyboard navigation
- Simple to use
Solution:
First, I created a graphical button that will load in a standard swf with some specially named frames. The designer puts the different button states in the different frames. (There HAS to be a standard Flex control for this, but I couldn’t find it. Any suggestions? I’d love to replace my little custom implementation with a standard one.)
Then I created a combo-box like control that uses those buttons with a popup menu.
Results:
http://www.rogue-development.com/popup_menu/sandbox.html
I’ll package this up and publish under an MIT license sometime soon if anyone else is interested.
Really nice component ! good work
Yep. There are people interested.
Definitely interested. This could come in very handy for a project that I’m working on.
Wonderful component. Yes, we are really interested in!!!!
Hi, I’m working on a project and I can’t seem to get this popup menu like you have done. I’d appreciate if you can send me your source.
Good work you’ve done
Thanks.
General download link:
http://rogue-development.com/swfControls.xml
Source code:
http://www.rogue-development.com/uploads/SwfControls.zip
I haven’t touched this in a few months so it may require some tinkering to get working property with flex builder 3.
Thanks Marc. I’ve got a little one did. I’d like to send it to you but how do i get it across so you could check it i.e. how do i upload it on this blog?
Hi Mark,
I tried to download the source using the link given above. But it is giving Error 404 (File not Found). Can you please check the link again?
Btw, it is a wonderful component. Can’t wait to use it in my application.
Thanks.