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).

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.

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 "pages", thus adding real depth to your applications. Youll also learn how to build web forms that are intuitive to use, helping your users provide the information youre 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; its time for designers to take back RIAs and show what that "R" really stands for. The Internet is not just about collecting data—its about visual communication and giving people a rich user experience, and thats 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

LordAlex is an active member of the Flash community and a wellrespected industry leader with over 7 years of experience creating content and applications for the Internet and devices. He is the founder of LordAlex Works™ (LAW), a Flash platform consultancy firm based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, helping new media and content providers deliver intelligent, rich Internet content and powerful applications based on the Flash platform.

LordAlex runs a personal blog dedicated to the Flash platform and related technologies that you can read at www.lordalex.org.

You can find LordAlex in his spare time writing tutorials in English, French, and Spanish or speaking at international events and conferences. LordAlex also runs the local official Montreal Adobe User Group, the largest AUG in the province of Quebec.

Greg 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 www.greggoralski.com.