6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 4
April 22, 2009
Since our new book focuses on rich interactions, I want to spend some time on Adobe Flex/AIR.
These tips are based on the best Flex resources I have found, and how you can use them to craft a great user experience. This is part 4 of 6:
- Play With It: 10 Explorers & Galleries
- Learn From the Best: 10 Great Flex Apps
- Learn From the Rest: 10 Great RIAs
- Stock Your Toolbox: 40+ Custom Flex Controls
- Review Best Practices for Designing a RIA
- Avoid Common Mistakes: 10 Anti-Patterns
Stock your Toolbox: 40+ Custom Flex Controls
Flex 3 includes a wide range of controls. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have all of the Essential Controls I use for RIA design. But fortunately, talented and industrious Flex developers have created numerous custom controls for Flex.
I pulled together a visual repository of custom Flex controls. Most of these controls were created to showcase certain functionality- not usability best practices. So some may need further refinement to comply with the usability principles discussed in the previous posts. Click on the picture for the demo.
01. Accordions
Complex Headers
Horizontal Accordion
Apple Style
More under ‘Collapsible Panels’
02. Auto Complete
03. Bar Code Generator
04. Build a List
05. Calendar/Scheduler
ILog Elixir
Ely Greenfield’s early Scheduler
Adobe’s Scheduler on flexlib see flexlib.scheduling package
06. Captcha
07. Charts & Graphs
3D charts by iLog Elixir
Chart Drill Down with Animation
Dashed Line Series
Chart Offest
Advanced Legend
Scroll and Zoom
08. Collapsible Panels
Window Shade- panels roll up and down
Arc90’s Collapsible Panel
Early Stacked Panels
09. Cover Flow
Doug McCune’s updated Cover Flow
10. Data Visualization
Kap IT Lab
ILog Elixir
BirdEye
11. Docking
12. Drop Down Menu with Scrolling
13. Find and Highlight Text
In flexlib as Highlighter
14. Fisheye Menu (like Mac Dock)
15. Flip Card
16. Floating
17. Gantt Chart
ILOG Elixir Gantt
Doug McCune’s Early Gantt Chart
18. Inline Edit (Fields)
Early example by Ely Greenfield
Modal editing variation by Ryan Swanson
* The hover invitation to edit on a field by field basis (like Flickr) works best for infrequent edits
19. Icon Loader
On flexlib under Icon Loader
20. List/Tree Converter
On flexlib under Convertible Tree List
21. Mask (text input and validation)
22. Multiple Document Interface (MDI)
On flexlib under flexlib.mdi
23. Magnify
24. Map Callouts
23. Pan and Zoom
24. Page Turn
Peek Panel by Bill White (nice blog)
Ely Greenfield’s early FlexBook
Didier Braun’s PageFlip
25. Pivot Table
Satish’s Pivot Table
Flex Monster product
26. Resize
Resizeable and moveable window
Resize Objects with ResizeManagerFX
27. Scrolling-Internal
In flexlib as Drag Scrolling Canvas
28. Side Tabs/Vertical Tabs
Degrafa ToggleButtonBar vertical tabs
Vertical Tab Navigator
29. Sliders
30. Sliding Panel
Early example
Slide out menu with effects instead of states
31. Sparklines
More examples:
Fusion Charts
Sherlock Informatics
Birdeye
19nates
32. Spell Check
There is also a Spell Check component on Flex Exchange
33. Tabs (configurable)
34. Text Prompt/ Watermark Fields
At flexlib under prompting TextInput
35. Tree Table
Early Tree Grid
36. Time Picker
Alternate one on Flex Exchange as Time Chooser
37. Toolbars
38. Trees
Open branches by clicking on the row
Adding leaf notes
Showing XML
Rearranging nodes with drag and drop
Drag from a Grid to a Tree
39. Upload Files
40. Vertical Browse
Comment with your custom Flex controls
Please comment with a link to your favorite custom Flex controls.
6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 3
April 22, 2009
Since our new book focuses on rich interactions, I want to spend some time on Adobe Flex/AIR.
These tips are based on the best Flex resources I have found, and how you can use them to craft a great user experience. This is part 3 of 6:
- Play With It: 10 Explorers & Galleries
- Learn From the Best: 10 Great Flex Apps
- Learn From the Rest: 10 Great RIAs
- Stock Your Toolbox: The Essential Controls
- Review Best Practices for Designing a RIA
- Avoid Common Mistakes: 10 Anti-Patterns
Learn from the Rest: 10 Great RIAs
Take a look at some of the best RIAs on the web. How did I decide these are the best? I reviewed numerous applications, basing the evaluations on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Principles for User Interface Design:
Feedback — Metaphor — Navigation — Consistency — Prevention — Recognition — Efficiency — Design — Recovery — Help
I realize these guidelines are a bit old (from 1990!)- but all applications should meet these guidelines at a minimum. The applications listed below also embody our 6 Principles for Rich Interaction:
Make it Direct — Keep it Lightweight — Stay on the Page — Provide an Invitation — Use Transitions — React Immediately
01. CrazyEgg
Fantastic application which adheres to every one of the principles. At first, I thought the confetti feature was going to ruin the evaluation, but it is a perfect balance of innovation and usability. Look at how they use common checkboxes for selection, and wiggle the confetti when a source is added- very rich, very nice.
Interactive demo is available
02. Mint
Mint’s user experience only gets better and better. You may want more features in the product (money market support…), but the features they offer are perfectly executed. Primarily developed with HTML, CSS, JS and Ajax, they chose to incorporate Flex in the Trends section.
The new Ways to Save section is completely dynamic, updating as you adjust amounts, scores and preferences.
Free registration is available
03. Wufoo
Wufoo is an extremely well designed tool that has more than meets the eyes. Play with the templates and report creator for inspiration in keeping it simple, and look at they way they use Blank Slate and Help Tips to keep you moving towards your goal. It is almost even fun!
A nice product tour and free plan is available
04. 280 Slides
One word- slick. If only all of my projects could be this perfect. Yes, it seems like Keynote (or PowerPoint) on the web, but take a closer look at some of the features. Instead of the maddening Inspector and Format menu, the common formatting functions are in the toolbar. Everything is there when I need it, they even incorporated Adobe Kuler in the color palette!
Free trial available
05. Action Method
Another very well implemented product. It is easy to get started with the Blank Slate screens providing tips and directions, and even easier to get comfortable using the product because it uses a standard screen patterns and common controls.
Every detail has been accounted for. Notice the visual design that makes it clear that the tasks can be dragged around and reordered.
Trial version available
06. Fidelity Labs
In 2006 Fidelity Labs started cranking out some very nice RIAs, one of them being Fidelity MyPlan. The Mortgage Search and Homes Sold were also very nice, but have been retired. Unfortunately, their newest 3D Portfolio Analyzer, is not up to par with their earlier beta products.
The direct interactions and what-if scenarios in MyPlan seem to have inspired Discovers Paydown Planner and other direct manipulation financial planning tools.
Fidelity MyPlan is publicly available
07. Pandora
Pandora has been around since 2005 and has finally gained popularity. It has a very simple, intuitive interface, which makes it easy to get started. The menu offers direct interaction for rating the song ‘up’ or ‘down’, while also providing advanced options such as “don’t play this song again for a month”. And the help tips, shown at just the right time in the workflow, provide a glimpse into advanced features.
Pandora is publicly available
08. Wave Maker
Wavemaker is a great example of how a complicated product with many features can be clarified with good interface design. They use a logical page flow from left to right- matching the developer workflow of adding a control to the canvas (LEFT) , physically manipulating it (CENTER), then entering tweaking the details in the properties and style panel (RIGHT).
A Cloud Edition is available
09. SugarSync
Another great product that relies upon standard screen patterns and common controls to create an intuitive efficient experience. Awarded Top 10 User Interfaces of 2008 by Jakob Nielsen. Report available for purchase.
A 45 day trial is available
10. clickshirt
clickshirt keeps it simple and fun with integrated demos and lively interactions. Event the checkout is rich, hover to see more details about the t-shirt type, click to specify the size and quantity. No gratuitous paging in this application.
clickshirt is publicly available
More Good RIAs
These products have good examples of rich usable components, although they may not have met the 10 basic principles for usability throughout the whole application.
37signals products like Highrise
Keep an Eye on These
iWork.com Publishing Tool
Comment with your favorite RIA
I realize I have only skimmed the surface here, please comment with a link to the best RIA you use.
Thanks to Rob Jones and Greg Leppert for helping me pull together this list.
Cursor Stencil on Graffletopia
April 4, 2009
I realized after 3 years of using OmniGraffle, I should break down and make a cursor stencil to make my job a little easier. These are all on a transparent background, so you can put them in your wire frames to show cursor state for specific rich interactions.
