Rob Adams's User Eccentric

Introducing the Flex Interface Guide!

For the past two-and-a-half months, I've been hard at work on a project that some of us on the Adobe Flex team have been working to get off the ground for some time now. But we finally did it, and the first part of the Flex Interface Guide (or "FIG" for short) is now online on the Flex Developer Center!

So what is the FIG? And why spend so much time on it instead of working on getting more features and components into the Flex product line (although we're always doing that too)? Primarily because the FIG does several things for us that merely revving the product alone won't ever accomplish.

The FIG describes (and in some ways prescribes) the kinds of RIAs that we intend folks to build with the Flex platform. Good RIAs. Great ones, even. RIAs that are as well designed as Adobe XD showcase apps such as the Tour Tracker and some of the best customer applications like Yahoo! Maps and Picnik. By articulating the design principles and practices behind these applications, we hope to make it easier for Flex designers and developers to learn how to design their own applications to be as good or better than these.

But the FIG is more than just advice. Articulating what we think makes a great RIA helps us understand what we need to do to make building such RIAs even easier in the Flex framework than they are today. If a best practice we discuss in the FIG is more difficult to achieve in Flex that you'd like, we're going to take that really seriously and make it easier as soon as we possibly can. One way we'll do that is by revving the Flex framework and tools, but another, faster way is by releasing components and sample code on the FIG site itself that developers can pick up and use to easily implement many of the FIG design idioms.

Note that what's available right now is only a first set of content; I'll be adding more real soon. But even what's up there now is fairly extensive, and it's all in "public draft" form. This means I really, really want to hear from everyone on what they think of it! Check out the FIG feedback forum (how alliterative!) and post comments, kudos, criticisms, rants, and flames! Ok, maybe not flames.

Oh, and a shout out to the guys at Wheeler Street for helping me to design and develop the FIG components. Aaron and Paul, you guys have been great. If anyone is looking for Flex consultants, give them a ring!