Adobe Flex Mapping Interfaces

An interesting article on Flex map interfaces written by a collegue of mine:

http://www.webmapsolutions.com/building-perfect-flex-map-interface

AlivePDF

Its been a hectic time with project work. Much to share particularly with regards the ArcGIS Flex API and the open source OpenScales Flex library.

Just a quick mention today on AlivePDF. Historically, I've had to generate PDF's in PHP. AlivePDF is based on the PHP library FPDF. It makes generating PDF's from Flex very straighforward. Alex Britez has written a simple example here.

Building RIA maps

It took a while but my article for Adobe on building RIA maps in Flex has been published.

Flex Flash Maps

I mentioned in an earlier post my Flash revisit. The Flash map applications in the London Guardian have always impressed me. I thought I could use Flex as the framework and eventing manager and build a series of flash maps. So a Flex Flash combo. Modularity was also something I wanted to explore. The large Flash applications built by some of the flash mapping companies seem unnecessary. Anyway, the application in its base form is available here. Right click to view the code and/or download.



Note: In the right pane you can zoom in and out by selecting a tool and clicking. Alternatively you can simply use the mouse wheel.

Mapping and MVC

I found here a nice article on the Model-View-Control design architecture/pattern. Its a useful pattern to know about and this article lays things out nicely.

Flash CS3 Map Evolution

The Flash CS maps I have been building using AS3 is moving along slowly. I shared a link in an earlier blog entry to the first phase. Most of the time here was spent assembling the assets ie. movieclips of each continent/country/state and supporting XML. The XML is tied to the movieclip via a number - <id>1</id>, sprite 1. Thus I have an all continents swf and individual continents eg. northamerica.swf. These are made up of individual country/state movieclips. Clicking on a continent, loads the individual continent swf. Since Flex is the glue for the swf's, I have used eventing to communicate between each of the swf's; flash to flex, flex to flash. The eventing code I used was an adaptation of code shared by Jason Fincanon. The code is as follows:


The next phase of the map I have also now posted.



Here I have integrated the zoom functionality from Peter Organa (see earlier post). Thus the zoom.swf provided by Peter now listens to which continent was selected and loads the appropriate swf. Now a selected continent can be panned, zoomed into and out. This will allow, in the next phase, geolocated pins to be added to the map.

Flash CS3 Actionscript 3 and Maps

It has been a long while since I worked with the Flash IDE. Going back to Flash MX in fact. I'm approached quite often about Flash jobs. Often they ask for Actionscript 2.0 which I often find a little odd. Must be a good reason. Anyway, I enjoy working with AS3 in Flex so thought it time to return to Flash. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was using both the Flash CS3 IDE and Flex Builder. It took a little getting used to but I'm beginning to get comfortable. I've been building a vector based Flash map application:

Flash CS3 AS3 Map

I'll admit to being rather wrapped up in it. The continents/countries/states are individual movieclips. Metadata is loaded from XML. Flex is being used to tie the main 'all continents' swf to individual continents. There are 8 swf's in all. Its a cool little app I think. Rather than building one honking big swf, break everything into smaller pieces and use Flex as the glue. I have a list of things to do. Adding zoom to the right pane, and overlaying pins (from a lat/long conversion) using loaded XML will make it a really functional application.
I've avoided mentioning animation. I'll admit i'm very interested. In AS2 I avoided it like the plague. In CS3 AS3 it seems easier. I've played somewhat and found it all pretty straighforward. I plan to add a little cool animation to this app...