John Grden is at it again.
Flexible is a Flex-based visual MXML editor. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a Flex 2 application that creates other Flex 2 applications. Or at least the MXML portion. While free tools such as FlashDevelop allow you to do AS3 and MXML coding, there’s still a gap in the free, open source, visual layout end of things. A few other projects have started, but I think Flexible is unique in that it is built in Flex, rather than based on some other layout program.
Wow, that’s seriously intense.
Cool tip. Thanks. 🙂
We also have our eyes on it at FlashDevelop.. 🙂
haha Terrible, John it’s a crazy geek.
Cease and desist! Chances are that there is a clause in Adobe’s plentiful and lengthy EULAs, which state one cannot create tools with Adobe’s products that compete with Adobe’s products. Do not proceed with development until you’ve hired a team of lawyers to research patented ideas both implemented and merely conceived.
Aardvark,
Please cease and desist witht the FUD. Are you a lawyer? Have you read the Flex Builder 2 EULAs? Nothing is patnented either as far as I can tell. Please back up anything you say in regards to the legality of Flexible with proof. Anyway, Keith’s blog is a weird place to have this type of discussion.
I’m no lawyer, but it sounds a bit ridiculous.
From the flexible osflash.org page:
pre-alpha release on 10.24.2006
ya’ll come back now, ya’ hear?
I guess we should give John a nudge, eh?
Hehe sorry guys, I extended that deadline to be sometime this week 😉 I needed to get it to a point of being somewhat usable with property editing etc. and I wanted to implement:
1. switching to code view and back
2. modified drag/move behavior
3. resize by dragging from bottom left
1,2 are what I’m shooting for before I release since i think they’re critical parts to the puzzle
Sorry, I had just finished reading an article about IBM suing Amazon over some silly little patents and so when I saw John’s application, and it’s potential, I thought I’d make a joke. I suppose that as ridiculous as it sounds, it wasn’t funny.
No, I’m not a lawyer and I quit reading EULAs when I started finding clauses about how terms were subject to change. I do recall reading once in one of Microsoft’s application EULAs that their tools could not be used to create competitive products. Adobe isn’t Microsoft and I doubt that Adobe would care about any open-source product so long as the developer wasn’t making money at their expense. Anyhow you are right, Keith’s blog is a weird place to discuss such.
no worries Aardvark, I thought it was a joke too 😉
just an update: I’ll be releasing it tonight no matter what it looks like 😉 I’ve made some great progress with the property manager and I’d REALLY like to get switching back and forth between code/design view working before putting it out there. As long as there’s a football/baseball game on, it’s easy to justify the evening hours with the wife 😉
John, awesome! What is it? An ‘app’ or is it a SWF, projector?
right now, it’ll just be a SWF. I’d like to make it an apollo app when apollo comes out, but for now, I’m just going to do a swf.
to do the loading of an mxml doc, i’ll give the user a text field to paste a location into. For saving, i’ll output to a textarea panel and copy to the clipboard.
Keith and I had talked about actually compiling with it by using mxmlc later on 😉 but I don’t know about that yet. THere’s a TON to do to make it just a usable design/layout tool.
Ok cool. Sounds awesome. *drum roll*
Ok, it’s out there!
Read the notes, I’m tired, video tomorrow, hope you like it…night night 😉
http://flexible.riaforge.org/
Yea!!!
John = (SuperHero)John;
Points:
I ran it — interface and UI looks awesome. I can’t get the File/properties text showing up though and I pressed ‘shift’ to load in — doesnt work. I ran it in the standalone debug player. Is that the wrong player? I’ve got flex builder and the only players I can find are under a debug folder. Any ideas?
If you save the .swf as a projector .exe then it works.
Yup! That’s what you have to do! I gotta get the security for loading the external XML files dealt with so it works 😉