This is a follow up to my previous post, For Designers: How to Create a Flex Skin.

Ok, so you just received an email from a designer, since they are scared of Subversion, with an attachment of a fresh new glossy Flex skin (just kidding, we must be nice to our designers....otherwise, they will draw degrading cartoons of us). Below are 3 short tutorials on how to apply the skin, from start to finish.

Setting up Flex Builder:

Importing Skins into Flex Builder:

Testing and Customizing Skins:

I've noticed that many designers are completely scared of Flex. I understand. Flex is scary. However, Adobe is making Rich Internet App design very approachable for UI designers now. So, if you're a designer, it's time to stop complaining and jump on the Flex bandwagon. It's easy. Really.

Below are a few tutorial videos on how to create a skin for a Flex application in Fireworks from start to finish. You can also create skins in Photoshop using a very similar technique.

If you're a developer, don't bother with the mind-numbing nonsense below, see my other post: For Developers: How to Apply a Flex Skin

Setting up Fireworks CS3:

Editing Skin Templates in Fireworks:

Exporting Skins From Fireworks:

The concepts introduced around "Web 2.0" have shifted the way users interact with the web and their data. This presentation is an excellent vision of where the web is going (beyond rich user interfaces)...

This is a very cool little application that will allow you to very easily install and run Internet Explorer 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6 and 7. It's especially nice to be able to test pages in IE 6 and 7 on the same machine during development...

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Apparently there's this thing called Google, and you can just type in what you're looking for and it finds it.

Amazing, eh?

Hence, I found another tool. It's called Pixel Ruler. Take a guess what it does.

I just found a tool we all will probably find valuable. It's called Virtual Magnifying Glass. It basically allows you to bind a hotkey to transform your mouse into a magnifying glass. If you're like me, you're constantly squinting to assess some tiny graphic flaw, and then you may end up taking a screenshot into Photoshop and zooming in several times to be sure. This tool eliminates the need for that.

I have worked some with the AS2 Yahoo! maps components, and the AS2 version integrated pretty well with Flex, but I have been anxiously waiting for an AS3 version.

With only a couple of lines of code, literally, you can get their mapping component working in your own Flex app...

Check it out here:
Yahoo! Maps AS3