Foundation Flex for Designers (eBook)

This book details how to customize the look and feel of Flex applications. It takes you through how to customize style and layouts using CSS; how to bring design assets into Flex from applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Flash; how to spice up your design work with some handy ActionScript 3.0 techniques; and even a look forward to designing hybrid desktop/web applications with Flex and AIR. It culminates with several design-oriented case studies, including a video picker application, picture gallery, customer service site, and more.

Greg Goralski is an interdisciplinary interactive designer based in Toronto. He is an alumni of the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab and the Interactive Project Lab. He has won gold at the National Post Design Exchange Awards and has presented his work at numerous festivals, including the World Expo in Aichi, Japan. As a professor at the Humber College School of Media Studies, he divides his time among playing with technology, training the next generation of interactive designers, and being inspired by his students. Greg also drinks too much coffee, and should really be living on a beach. His website is GregGoralski.com.

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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).You'll learn how to efficiently use and style states, enabling you to switch between "e;pages"e;, 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 "e;R"e; 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.