CFForm/Flex Visio Stencil
Wireframe! Wireframe! Wireframe! - We all know it's a good idea. But up to now there wasn't any great way to do this for your RIA applications. Boxes on a napkin don't cut it, and using the next closest thing the WinXP UI Stencil in visio just didn't feel right, it just didn't look like the finished product. well...
Darren Houle, has finally done something about that. He has put together a Halo Visio Stencil for Visio 2002/2003. It has 43 different Flex Components that you can use to layout everything from a simple flash form to a full RIA application. I've been using this for the past week, and trust me you build better apps quicker if you stop and think about them first.
You can get it here, and it's only $20 bucks: http://63.135.103.199/ecomm/
A few quick notes...
For some reason that site link Mike specified has rare, intermittent problems generating cfform's. If you get a blank gray screen when you try to load the page let me know so I can get my ISP to bump CF. If it continues I may revert back to plain HTML instead of using cfform's till the ISP fixes this, but the cfform coolness factor was too great to resist.
Also, it's an IP link because although I own and operate the root domain name site attached to that IP (irccorp.org) they have nothing at all to do with this stencil I developed. I'm just using some space there for the time being (to run the cfforms on CFMX7) so I'm just linking to the IP for now.
Finally, some questions asked by people who have already downloaded the stencil...
Q: Will you ever include other styles other than HaloGreen?
A: Probably not. There's just too many combinations of colors and styles so for now I'll stick to HaloGreen. I'm also guessing that MM will eventually release some kind of design tool one day that may make my stencil obsolete, so I don't want to put months of work into adding other styles.
Q: When will the new Flex 2.0 objects be added?
A: As soon as 1) MM has finally settled on the new components they're adding and the old components they may deprecate, and 2) once they publish a 2.0 version of the "Flex Samples Explorer"
Q: Will you automatically send the 2.0 stencil once it's ready?
A: Yes, I'll automatically send the 2.0 stencil once it's ready :-)
Q: It took a while for the stencil to get to me, is there a problem?
A: If that happens I apologize. I'm not a business, just a guy, so I don't have things automated yet. I'm emailing the stencil once I receive notification of payment. Please have patience, I will definitely get a copy to you.
Thanks again, and I hope this stencil helps you design your RIA's faster and smarter, it certainly has for me (but I'm a little biased.)
Tools like Fireworks and ImageReady are often used to create web page mockups, but don't have the functionality of Visio shapesheets which allow for the addition of context sensitive menus, functions, popups, group dependencies, and other dynamic content embeded within the stencil objects.
For instance, switching TabNavigator from "normal" to "Halo" to "Selected" is just a right click in Visio, but in FW you'd need multi-layer images or multiple image files to acomplish the same thing. And for objects like Text Area or Tree Node (which have multiple modes and enabled/disabled dependencies) you'd need more than one Fireworks image file.
Certainly possible, just alot more cumbersome, so I don't think I'll go there. When it comes to rapid design Visio really is my favorite... as long as you've got the stencils you need... and now you do! :-)
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