I wasn't really trying to start a discussion on the merits or use of DV,
but I don't mind.
I've heard this sentiment before and we'll just have to agree to
disagree. I've been a Flex dev since just before version 3, so I hope
I'm worth SOME salt. Everyone that I have worked with, although less
advanced, has used design view for complex layouts. I've used custom
components with it as well, and never expect them to work 100% correctly
- the main point of DV was to do the component positioning & sizing. I
use DV sometimes to locate a component in code or to rename the ID of a
component (click on comp in DV, go back to source and it moves you to
the line of the tag).
I suspect we're using the feature differently, or for different types of
projects. I use bindings, but rarely use custom events, and I know our
apps run great on some rather bogged down PCs. For a mobile project or
even most web projects, since they tend to have simpler UIs, DV may not
have much value. I rarely use the "advanced" DV features, but DV is
essential to me to allow for rapid form layout/prototyping and efficient
changes to very complex screens. I use the snap and align features
quite a bit too, although it is fussy until you get used to it. I'm
100% certain it increases my productivity.
Where I work, sometimes our users have an operational need to have lots
of "stuff" visible at once. Often these pages are buried inside the
application. Repeatedly tweaking size and position from code, and then
running the app would have taken far too much "drilling down" into the
application workflow to be productive. Honestly, I can't imagine how
certain apps could be developed productively otherwise. There could be
20 or 30 fields/labels with datagrid(s), buttons, etc. and there's
simply no way to redesign the UI to get around it without slowing the
users down or confusing them. The dynamic UI stuff just wouldn't work
for our apps, and it tends to confuse or annoy based on feedback; I only
make use of it under special circumstances.
So I don't know, I guess there will always be two camps here. But don't
forget that quite a few competing SDKs have such design tools.
ExtJS/GWT and GWT come to mind here.
-Eric
On 9/3/2013 10:30 PM, Nick Collins wrote:
I would respectfully disagree. Every Flex engineer worth their salt that I
have ever worked with dumped the design view after about week 3 of learning
Flex.
Typically after that point when you start integrating your code with real
live data sources that are driving your UI the design view rapidly becomes
worthless. You start drawing your UI dynamically based on the data that is
provided, learn that the demos they do with data binding will never be used
in the real world because of the performance hits you get by just putting a
[Bindable] on everything without custom events tied to them, etc. and the
design view would just fall apart with those real world scenarios.
On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Eric <eh.fx...@gmail.com> wrote:
I wasn't able to find anything recent about a UI design tool for Apache
Flex. There seemed to be some discussion of this awhile back, but how far
did it get? Are there any links to a project or source? Sorry if this has
been brought up 100 times already. I think a tool like this will be
crucial (in "the enterprise space") to help power the widespread adoption
that Falcon will hopefully bring.
