Cool, and I totally understand where you're coming from. Believe me, there have been many occasions that I've run into the same brick walls; where there isn't a built-in property for what I need to do. And yes, from time to time, the phrase "what the heck?" comes out of my mouth. You know, even for little things, like having a global way to use the hand cursor on buttons, and all controls that extend from it. I also don't want to come off like I'm jumping down your throat for speaking up. Obviously, mine is just a single voice in a big croud. My take on it however, is that Flex isn't quite a mature product just yet. There is still room to improve and I do think that the people at Adobe have done an exceptional job getting to this point. Hopefully, threads like this, logging wish-list features and continued patience will help make the product much more robust in the future.
Cheers, -TH --- In [email protected], "Amy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "Tim Hoff" TimHoff@ wrote: > > > > > > Hi Amy, > > > > I guess that everyone has their own perspective. Like you, I used to > > complain that the flex styles weren't as comprehensive as the .net > > controls that I was used to at the time. However, looking at it from > an > > 80-20 point of view, the basics are there; especially for charts. The > > point is that I'll gladly sacrifice some built-in properties, if the > > framework supports rolling my own components and/or extending; to > > customize properties. Sometimes, it takes more time and effort to > > complain about something, than it does to just create it yourself. > > Here's a solution that took very little time to create: > > Thanks, and I do appreciate it--I don't mean to sound ungrateful. But > the point of my question was not to complain. > > Literally every time I have gone to "roll my own" solution to something > that at first seemed to be missing from Charts, I discovered that it > was already covered by the charting FW. And this is nice--really nice-- > since I have never had a week where I literally did not have to recode > _anything_, it just worked as advertised. > > While exploring charting, the majority of examples I have found have > used a hack to solve a problem that doesn't exist in charting: > > http://www.rphelan.com/2008/05/23/taking-control-of-flex-charting- > styles/ > uses a tick mark the same color as the background instead of labelgap > > http://blogs.adobe.com/flexdoc/2008/07/customized_legend_layout.html > rewrites the Legend control rather than just set a width on the Legend > > and on and on... > > The problem, as I see it, is that when people run up against a > percieved limitation like this, they immediately run out and write > something to "fix" it. This robs the Adobe team of the motivation to > provide nice, user-friendly components like charting if they know > people aren't going to use the in-built functionality if they can't > find the feature in the 3 seconds they spend with the docs. After all, > if it takes 20 hours to write a feature, 20 hours to qa it, and 20 > hours to document it, if nobody ever uses it because they are so used > to running out an building their own at the first hint of trouble, why > would Adobe invest the time? > > I've been as guilty of it as anyone, but I intent to do my absolute > darnedest to make sure I'm leveraging what's in the features before I > go off and write something custom. I come from a history of developing > in a product Adobe doesn't make anymore--Authorware. Most Authorware > developers say there's a double learning curve with that product. > First, you learn the icons and flow line (analagous to MXML) and then > you learn the code. Most developers stop there, but a very few take > the third curve--going back and _really_ learning the icons and _not_ > coding features that were already beautifully, elegantly implemented in > the icons. > > Because I've been through all three curves with another product that > is similar in some ways to Flex, I know that I can save myself a lot of > effort if I try to integrate the third curve with the first and second > curves. > > I sincerely believe there _is_ a simple solution to this problem that > already exists in the charting framework. And that is the answer I'm > asking for. It's a question, not a complaint. > > Thanks :-) > > -Amy >
