Using a plain Flex UI theme to show clients before styling

15 November 2007, 19:18, by Jon

The default Flex 2 Aeon theme looks fairly polished and showing it to clients in the early stages of a project can have it’s disadvantages. For example a client may believe the project is closer to release than it is or if you use Adobe Flex for prototyping may believe that the default theme represents the final look and feel.

If you intend to customise the chrome of a flex app, showing a client the default look and feel not only leads the client into a false expectation of the finish product but, if the app is purely a prototype, may make a case for it being used for the foundation of production code or prevent an further exploration in to the visual design.

Ted Patrick has provided an excellent technique to overcome this.

Using Ted’s example you can strip all chrome from the UI components and then effectively build an interactive wireframe for your app which can then be styled / disgarded without any preconceptions on the client’s behalf.

 

Ted provides the sources for his example which also includes the CSS to strip the Halo theme’s chrome from the UI controls.

For more information:



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About Jon

Jon started his career hacking code on his Sinclair Spectrum before moving on to more sophisticated machines ( ...such as a Commodore 64 ). He graduated from the University of Kent in 2000 with a degree in Computer Science and since then has worked in finance and education before co-founding Go Tripod. He is passionate about usability and design and his favourite development technologies are Ruby, and Objective-C/Cocoa. When he is not sat at his desk he is standing on his head doing yoga, refining his taste for food or on an adventure exploring the great outdoors.

Go Tripod Ltd

Go Tripod Ltd is a UK-based development company working with some of the most exciting software technologies around. Simon Ashley, Jon Baker and Colin Ramsay are the brains behind projects such as Stubmatic, and are developing bespoke web, mobile and desktop software for clients with household names. We believe in good service as well as good software, and we’re eager to work with people who feel the same.