Apr 27 2009
What are modal windows?
In user interface design, a modal window is one that commands the end-user’s immediate attention – the user must interact with the window and/or close it before he may return to the main application.
When using the Aspire UI library, a modal window is created by including WINDOW.IS_MODAL in the “mode” parameter of the uiWindow constructor:
Apr 23 2009
Sometimes, it is useful to give an empty text input field a textual background. It serves as a “hint” to end-users as to what input is expected from them, or it can also be used in-lieu of input field labels.
A “hint” text is different from a default text value. The “hint” text is displayed only if the text field is empty; it is not displayed while the field has focus or if the field is already populated with any value. The “hint” text is also not reported as the value of the text field.
Apr 21 2009
A new theme has been added to the Aspire UI library. Below is a screen shot of the theme in use:
Apr 17 2009
In a previous demo Loading embedded fonts on-demand using the uiFonts manager, the uiFonts manager was shown to load external embedded font SWFs “on-demand”.
The uiFonts manager can work with embedded font SWFs compiled either from the Flash IDE or the Flex compiler.
When compiling using the Flash IDE, we use Font Symbols in the Library (see uiFonts usage notes).
When compiling using the Flex compiler, we use a single AS3 class file. The following shows how the AS3 Class must be written in order for the resulting SWF to work with the uiFonts manager.
Apr 15 2009
The “long press” context menu is an alternative to the typical right-click context menu. In this example, we will allow end-users to bring up a contextual menu by “long pressing” (pressing the left-mouse button down on a spot and holding it down for a predefined time).
This example was implemented using uiMenu from the ActionScript 3.0 Aspire UI library.
Apr 10 2009
The following SWF features the uiDialog component from Aspire UI Standard Edition:
Apr 09 2009
Why Embed Fonts?
Embedding a font inside a SWF file means that the font does not need to be present on the devices the SWF file eventually plays back on. In order to ensure that text are rendered in the way the Flash application developer originally intended, it is often necessary to embed the fonts used in the application. This is especially so for fonts that are not commonly installed in the target devices. The use of embedded fonts is also mandatory for some features of the Flash Player to work, such as text rotation and transparency (pre-Flash Player version 10).
The Problem
Unfortunately, embedding fonts into the application SWF can seriously bloat the file size. It will also increase compile time significantly, wasting much development time.
The Solution
Using the uiFonts manager from Aspire UI Standard Edition, it is possible to use embedded fonts without compiling them into the main application SWF. Instead, each individual font exists in its own external SWF file which is loaded into the application on-demand during run-time. These font SWF files can be created once for each font and re-used across different applications.
This is especially helpful for applications where the use of embedded fonts is essential, such as an apparel print design or greeting card design application that offers multiple font choices.
Apr 09 2009
One of the key features of the Aspire UI library is the ease of skinning which is done via external PNG images. These images are loaded during run-time instead of being compiled into the application SWF. Not only does it make it easy to (re)design component skins, it also makes it easy to try out different themes. As long as a theme is designed and developed correctly, an application can switch themes easily.
The following is the exact same SWF shown in the previous uiWindow Example, but this time it is rendered using the “classic” theme (included in the Aspire UI distribution):
Apr 08 2009
Here is a live demo featuring the uiWindow component from Aspire UI Standard Edition:
Apr 07 2009
GhostWire Studios is pleased to announce the release of Aspire UI Components Standard Edition.
Aspire UI is a library of Actionscript 3.0 (AS3) classes for building flexible and lightweight UI elements in Adobe Flash applications. Key features include automatic tab focus ordering, CSS text styles, layout management, and easy skinning using external PNG bitmap files.
Aspire UI Standard Edition includes all the classes from Aspire UI Lite Edition (previously released as Aspire UI Components Set 1) and the following new components:
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