Google Checkout is a good alternative to PayPal for many businesses. If you own an eCommerce website, selling physical goods or digital downloads, you would in most cases want to support both if not more options. Other payments options that are popular are Moneybookers, Amazon Flexible Payments and of course Credit card acceptance through one of the many merchant processing options.
The Flex Google Shopping cart allows you to accept Google Checkout as a payment option from your Flex website. It uses the Google HTML Name-Value pair API to post the contents of your shopping cart to Google. The cart comes with a rudimentary Product display and examples on how call the Shopping Cart add/delete/update methods.
Clean effects and a lot of useful Ecommerce functionality make this one of the best Flex Google shopping carts in the market.
Google Search has an Ajax API that can be used to execute search directly from the browser to the Google servers without the need for intermediate server side code on your website. Executing a search from Flex or Flash reduces to invoking the Google Search api with the apikey, specifying the type of resultset size you want (full or compact) and parsing the JSON reply.
Sounds simple? We are not quite yet done though. You also need to build a display page for the results, provide navigation capabilities to go to the previous or next page or jump to any page. Invocating the Google Search API, building the clickable search results and the related navigation to more results can be componentized as in this Google Search Flex Component. Some of the nice features of this component are
No server side code
Supports 2 styles – “Compact” space saver and the “Full” style
Customizable Item renderers
AIR capable
It comes with full API documentation and examples so putting a Google Search on your Flex or Flash application is as easy as drag-drop. Since this is a pure Actionscript search with some minor MXML changes, you can make it work from Flex 4 as well. You can get the full specification sheet for this component and jump to the live demo page by clicking here.
Want to use this component just from HTML and not inside Flex or Flash? That works too! just try out the live demo below on this WordPress page…
Data visualization in Flex is extremely powerful primarily due to some very strong components in this space like the Data Grid, Advanced Data Grid and the many Charts and Graphs that Flex offers. All of these components are extremely dynamic and user interactive.
At times, there still exists a need to extend these components to do more. Take for example, the fairly consistent need to provide users the ability to show or hide columns in a data grid. This need for personalization is fairly consistent across many implementations. Another common need in a Data Grid or Advanced Data Grid is the need to search for a string in the rather huge data content of a datagrid as it is fairly difficult to visually eyeball specific text by scrolling the Data Grid contents.
The Smart Data Grid is a Flex component that extends the basic Flex Data Grid by adding capability to show or hide columns. It also provides a search box that can be used to search the contents of the data grid. Try this component out by clicking here.
Continuing on the theme of Flex components that have tween and 3D display effects like Flash components, here is another interesting component that “Flips” on mouseOver. The Flex Flip Card component is a pure actionscript component that uses two images – one for the front of the card and the other for the back of the card.
On mouse over event, it flips with a nice 3D effect. The component can of course be customized to flip on mouse click instead of mouse over. Since this is an Actionscript component, it will work from FlashBuilder 4 as well. Try out the live demo of the component by clicking here.
Flex Flip Card Component Flips Vertical or Horizontal on Mouse Events
Ever wondered how to create nice dynamic motion effects in Flex? When it comes to natural effects like Rain, Snow, Fountains etc modeling the “Particle” behavior for random natural events like Wind, Trubulence etc form the basis of the implementation. An astute programmer will immediately smell “inheritance” here. Add a bit of Math to the base particle to react to these natural events, give it a look and feel and combine the math and positoning on stage with tween effects. Add group behavior and you have dynamic realistic effects!
Sounds simple? Probably not! Enter the power of a components and it really is easy to add these dynamic effects by treating the component as a black-box and configuring its many properties to create the dynamic effect with just a single line of code that instantiates the lifecycle of the component.
Since seeing is believing, take a look at this Flex Snow effect. It can be attached to any Flex display object including images and photos. It supports many configuration options like wind, turbulence, snow flake size, intensity etc. With this component, you can make it snow anywhere, even in a tropical paradise where you took your last vacation.
Since this is a pure Actionscript component, it supports both Flex 3 and Flex 4. A detailed overview of this component can be found here.
When it comes to dynamic effects involving time and motion Flash leads Flex. The gap is however closing especially with the new Flashplayer 10 and the new Flex 4 release. For example, take a look at this Dynamic 3D Cylindrical Image Gallery that works from Flex 3 and Flex 4 (Flex 3 usage required Flashplayer 10). The gallery is extremely customizable with options like
Auto Rotate
Rotation speed
Mouse over captions
XML config for thumbs and full size images
And it is all pure Actionscript so it can be used from Flex or Flash. The power of Actionscript components is there extreme reuse in both worlds. Freeing these components from the Flash timeline opens the door to Flex usage.
There are many uses of such 3D Flex Galleries like creating mesmerizing portfolio displays, product visualization images, Slideshows and Galleries. The dynamic and interactive nature of these components and the pleasing effects also make them very popular as a fashion statement for your website.
This Photo Gallery component will work with Flex 4 and Flex 3.4+ versions. It requires Flashplayer 10. You can check out a live preview of the Flex 3D Cylindrical Photo Gallery component here.
The difference between “Basic” and “Premium” is often just the visual display and the added benefits of user user interaction. Flex provides a basic Video Player. At times, basic is good enough. However, if you want to display the same component many times in many different places, the incremental benefits of premium components have a distinct advantage. Consider this premium Flex Video Player component. It comes with the following features that you will not find in the basic Flex Video Player
Full Screen Capability
Support for unlimited number of Playlists
Support for unlimited Videos in each Playlist
Customizable skins
Additional Video Controls
Clearly far better than the basic Flex Video Player! You can get this component from here
There are a number of times we struggle to make the graphics in our website prefect. The iterative process usually involves creating the graphics in Photoshop, exporting them for web use, trial and then rework in Photoshop.
The Flex dynamic Image Processing Library reduces the number of iterations by letting you make some simple modifications directly in Flex using PixelBender filters. These capabilities include
Changing Brightness and Contrast
HSV changes – Hue, Saturation and Value
Sharpening Images
Applying effects like Sepia and Greyscale
Light effects – Spotlight and Point light
Tint Effects
The name “Image Processing Library” is really a misnomer because these effects work on any display object.
More than just correction, you can apply nice Special Light effects and Age effects to your display objects. Add a Point light to a Chart to make it more visually appealing. A Spotlight on an image in a portfolio makes it stand out from the crowd for your featured items.
