First, I must digress. I have to admit, I've been really reluctant to get into Flex and MXML and all that jazz. Although, I do think Actionscript 3 is a huge improvement over the previous version. But Flex just doesn't feel like Flash to me. Maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe its because of my design schooling, or maybe its because I don't really build applications but rather consumer "experience" websites. However, the more and more Actionscript I write and the more I get into OOP concepts, the more it is starting to appeal to me. So recently I started familiarizing myself with Flex and what not just so I know what I'm missing out on.
Now to get on with the point of my post. I've checked out a few Flex applications online and some of the functionality displayed in these apps is awesome. My only gripe is that everything looks like Flex! Granted, I'm a total n00b when it comes to Flex and I'm sure there are ways to skin stuff, but right now it seems like a total pain in the ass. BUT! I did do some searching around today and just happened to stumble across what seems to be the start of a really awesome website: scalenine.com.
ScaleNine is a collection of themes created for Flex. It also serves as a source for interface options that expand beyond Flex's default theme. Some involve graphical skinning and others are purely CSS.
So this is starting to get me a little more interested, which is a good thing, because I certainly can't make consumer sites my whole life. Now its time to dive deeper into all of this and maybe have Marc teach me a few things.
6 Responses to “But It Looks Too Much Like Flex”
By Sho - Adobe on Feb 12, 2007 | Reply
Hey there. I totally agree, and to some extent, this is due to how long the technology has been out there. Flex 2 isn’t even a year old yet, and most projects are still in early phases. I wrote about it at http://kuwamoto.org/2007/02/05/overcoming-design-laziness/
I’d love for you to throw your hat into the ring and let us know what you think.
By Carl on Feb 12, 2007 | Reply
I totally agree. When designers use flex, you can tell they’re using flex. I’ve never seen an impressive website built on flex.
What’s funny is that most of the sites you go to which are flex tutorials don’t even use flex on their sites. I’ve followed some tutorials on actually building apps and it seems I would have to be psychic to code in this. It has no real data capabilities. Is anyone using this stuff or is it totally useless? Maybe sticking with Flash/Actionscript is the best option?
By Chad on Feb 12, 2007 | Reply
Cool find, I will definitely try some of these out in my Flex Apps. Once Apollo hits, using the OSX skin will be pretty nice for my apps, too.
By Theo on Feb 13, 2007 | Reply
I agree that for Flash sites that are about experience, the Flex look is too much coroprate and boring. However, Flex is about building applications as opposed to sites, and applications should try to be insvisible instead of eye-catching.
Some applications may need a custom look and feel, but most don’t. You wouldn’t write down a Mac application because it looks too much like Mac applications, would you?
I find myself in the same situation as you are in, I have just begun to play with Flex and realising the potential. I just finished a Flash website for which the client wanted a simple content management system to be able to administer the site without my help. At the time I started developing the CMS, Ajax seemed to be the best choice of technology. Today I would say that using Flex would have been simpler and it would have become better too. And in the case of a custom CMS look is not important (feel, however is another thing), so the standard Flex look is fine. It’s slick enough to get the client impressed, even.
I wouldn’t use Flex for consumer websites, thought. Perhaps if it was form-driven, but in that case I definitely would skin it.
By marc on Feb 13, 2007 | Reply
I was going to make this a separate post, but I think it’s only fair to make it a comment to Matt’s original observation on Flex.
I’m also from a design background, but when I took my current position at Schematic, I skipped out on design for a while and concentrated on development …. having said this, the first project I was on was flip.com.
The “flip book” viewer and creator on flip.com were built entirely in Flex. The designer and the developers did their best (the best a developer could do) at making this application look like it’s not built entirely out of Flex. Although I believe we did a fair job at accomplishing this, I think it only promotes Matt’s “first look” at what the framework, aesthetically, is capable of.
Given this, I think it’s good to point out that when HTML first hit the scene … way back when … every website looked drab. Everyone used their header tags one through five to segment text, and if you were lucky, you had a nice spiffy background …. maybe something in sand or an awesome animated GIF pattern. Since then, we have all sorts of hybrid HTML/XHTML/whatever sites that push what the original markup language could do.
Since Flex 2 is Adobe’s first push at making Flex more than a high-price enterprise application solution, I believe we will see people creating more stylized sites that may border on the type of style we see with consumer websites. I believe developers have to warm up to the framework more as well as communicate with their designers as to what the capabilities are of this new(ish) product.
That was way longer than I intended it to be …. so it goes.
By Marcus on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
Hot topic at the moment.
Take a look at this post . Lots of good links from people who know whats going on in the comments.
Here’s another really good set of resources.
Skinning is certainly a good start to the problem, but I think the solution you’re talking about goes a wee deeper than that. I vented my thoughts in a couple of posts ( here, here and here) if you’re interested.
Cheers