I'm a little late jumping in here, but I think this is an interesting idea, so I'll put in my two cents. I actually built something similar to this as a prototype for the company I used to work for, although I built it all with DHTML and JSP. I think the principle still applies, however.
The prototype I built was a frameset with two frames: in one frame, the user selected an HTML form element (text field, radio button, select box, etc) and specified its properties (length, options, name, etc). After clicking the "Add" button, the element would appear in the "whiteboard" frame where it could be dragged into place along with all the other elements that had previously been added. When the author was happy with his layout, he would click save, and the X and Y coordinates of all the elements would be saved so that the look could be reproduced with dynamically generated and absolutely positioned DIV tags and form elements. So I know for a fact it can be done with DHTML (and this was probably over two years ago, when DHTML support wasn't as good as it is now), and I suspect you could do something similar with Flash. In a Flash UI, one would simply drag movie clips around the stage, and when the save button was clicked, the element type, properties, and X and Y coordinates could be stored on the server (via Flash Remoting, XML Sockets, or even loadVariables). You could then use ColdFusion to dynamically build the CSS necessary to render something probably closely approximating the UI that was build in Flash. In theory, anyway. Hope this helps. Christian On Thursday, July 3, 2003, at 10:58 AM, Michael T. Tangorre wrote: > Hi everyone. > > I have an idea and need to know if it is within the capabilities of > Flash and CF. What I would like to do is provide an interface for > users to come to, where they can create forms and position the form > elements and element labels wherever they wish (within a maximum > area). How I envision this working would be to provide within the > interface an area that contained a list of possible form elements to > choose from (text input, text area, radio, check). When a user dragged > one of these into the "form area" they could give it a label and fill > in the attributes of that element as well as position the element and > its label wherever they wanted (within the bounds of course). Now for > the crazy part... > > Would it be possible to take that Flash movie that the user interacted > with to create the initial form and process it into an HTML form where > the layout was almost identical if not exactly identical to how it was > created via the Flash interface (from a positioning and layout > standpoint)? I was thinking maybe there are some functions in flash to > get element coordinates, etc... > > The idea would be that this form could be used within an HTML email or > website to gather user feedback. The second part would be to build > some kind of container on the backend whereas those results/responses > could be stored. > > Obviously this is a complex idea, one in which is beyond the scope of > my abilities at this time. > > Anyone have thoughts, ideas, technologies to look at, etc... ? > > Mike ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
