 Announcement: Gskinner Lightweight Interface ComponentsPosted on July 12, 2004 by Grant SkinnerI’m really happy to announce my latest internal project, named glic (previously Daedalus), or “gskinner lightweight interface components”. My company (gskinner.com) spends a lot of time building rich internet applications, and we grew really tired of working around v2 issues, and explaining major issues like file size and CPU usage to clients, so we finally decided to do something about it, and glic is the result.
That last one is especially important, because it means that you can use glic without having to relearn how to work with components – the interface that you use to work with them (methods, properties, events) is almost exactly the same as the one for the Macromedia v2 components. Below is an example of a demo application we retrofitted with glic. This application was built a few months ago, before glic was conceived, but the retrofit only took about an hour to accomplish (and much of that was due to beta issues). The initial size of the application was 80kB with v2 components (65kB of which is components). The glic version is only 31kB (16kB of which is components). Here are some before and after screenshots, featuring one of the skins we will be including with the components: List-view before
List-view after
Edit-view before
Edit-view after
Our goal is to make glic an affordable alternative to the Macromedia v2 component set. For more information, please keep an eye on this blog, and on the glic site at http://gskinner.com/glic/.
Follow @gskinner on Twitter for more news and views on interactive media.
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33 Comments
Looks sweet, Grant!
Posted by: Keith Peters on Jul 12, 2004 11:19am URL: http://www.bit-101.com
Hi Grant,
the advantages over mm's v2 components sound great (including the design). I'm really looking forward to take a look / work with glic.
Posted by: Simon Wacker on Jul 12, 2004 11:21am URL: http://www.simonwacker.com
Glicalicious!!
Congrats to you and your team Grant - everything looks great. Looking forward to seeing more.
Posted by: Lucas on Jul 12, 2004 11:32am
Great stuff Grant! Looking forward to giving it a whirl, are you planning a beta?
Posted by: Peter Elst on Jul 12, 2004 11:36am URL: http://www.peterelst.com
oh my god! oh my goooood! slick!
--- ahemmm : what components are in there (besides what we can see) ?
Posted by: 1stpixel on Jul 12, 2004 11:39am
Great stuff! But, I'm easily swayed by cheesy marketing gimicks, and the "By the power of Greyskull" He-Man reference is ultimately what sold me on it, sight unseen :)
Posted by: Sean Voisen on Jul 12, 2004 12:06pm URL: http://voisen.org
I'm really looking forward to the release of these components. I hope that they solve some of the issues I've been experiencing with the DataGrid and DataSet components, such as the following:
1) If DataGrid is bound in/out to DataSet by DataProvider only, when combined with CheckCellRenderer, the scroll bar jumps to the top when you click on a checkbox.
2) When using the DataSet filter function, when DataSet is bound (Out) to DataProvider and (In/Out) to SelectedIndex, the entire grid flashes with the color of the Selected Row state. Also when sorting, the 0 index always remains selected.
3) Row highlight on rollover doesn't work without a bunch of extra scripting when rolling over checkboxes with CellRenderer and other Renderer buttons.
4) DataGrid headers are not easily skinnable to a single color since they are drawn with the DrawingAPI with a gradient, and there's a style setting for only one of the colors.
If your components address these issues, that would be outstanding!
Posted by: Vidal Hulbert on Jul 12, 2004 12:24pm
These rock, and I can't wait to use them. What about 508 issues, for screen readers, etc? Is Glic's 508 compliance enhanced as well?
Posted by: Mike Britton on Jul 12, 2004 1:06pm
Excellent work, are these really interchangeable with V2 components, or are there features dropped? Man..if this promise to be what i hope for, i'll buy a company-wide license instantly!
Posted by: Owen van Dijk on Jul 12, 2004 1:28pm URL: http://ohwhen.typepad.com
How'd you guys get He-Man's phone number?
Posted by: Lucas on Jul 12, 2004 1:46pm
Advanced tabbing management and enhanced tabbing management? now that's more than I could ask for :)
Posted by: Wes Carr on Jul 12, 2004 2:11pm URL: http://www.2entwine.com
Yay!
The compression on those images, really killed the pretty skins :)
Posted by: Ryan on Jul 12, 2004 2:33pm URL: http://www.chewtinfoil.com
Looks and sounds very amazing. Will look forward to see more!
Posted by: Kingston Fung on Jul 12, 2004 5:11pm
>some of the issues I've been experiencing with the DataGrid and DataSet components,
Grant, do your component support data binding?
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
Posted by: mike chambers on Jul 12, 2004 6:40pm
Just a little nibblet for those reading.. what Grant said and put on display here isn't close to the coolness of seeing it in action.
I'm not going to reveal anything more than what he has shared, but it WILL be worth the wait.
Posted by: Richard Sydora on Jul 12, 2004 9:33pm URL: http://www.rsyd.com
It looks great,
but to me the most anoying problem with the Macromedia components is the lack of a comperhensive API documentation describing how to use the components programaticaly. (It took me about 3 hours to find out how to use the v2 scrollbar component independently of the other components.) If you guys can deliver that you will have real killer product.
Posted by: Julio Garcia on Jul 13, 2004 7:39am URL: http://www.randomnoise.org
Great to see you demo these at FF. Like many others, I'm looking forward to playing with these when they become available.
Posted by: darron on Jul 13, 2004 6:09pm URL: http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/archives/0…
well done!! i come from a programming background, and after spending literally days trying to develop a decent multi-form application with custom skinning in flash (and getting weird performance problems and ui/event glitches) i was going to rewrite the whole thing in java - it would have been way quicker in retrospect.
but, the promise of decent, skinable, lightweight gui components has given me hope again for flash. if you are looking for a beta tester, i am keen to help (with the obvious devious plan of getting to use your new components early).
also, any chance of setting up a small mail list so we can be notified when GLIC is ready for purchase? (i assume you will be selling them?).
what is the ETA for a first release?
Posted by: headrush on Jul 14, 2004 5:48pm
Doing some of my first MM2004 use of components, I noticed the huge hit some of these components take on flash. Some of it its unacceptable. Well to tell you the truth, I've been working on a set of components myself for our team. Implimenting MX04 calls, and keeping file size and mem usage down as much as possible. Even with novice-to-component-construction skills, I've been able to cut sizes dramatically and make the theming of the components easier.
My beta ComboBox weighs in at 11.9% the size of the MM ComboBox (.swf file size). To tell you the truth I cant think of how much useless bloated stuff is in the Flash components.
Excited to see what you guys are bringing to the table with these components.
Posted by: Ian on Jul 19, 2004 7:11pm
These sound better than what Macromedia could have done. Maybe they'll buy them and drop their kludgy implementations so that we can all have better access to a decent RIA platform.
I remember a year ago we were all thinking that this needed to happen, but it looks like Grant actually made it happen. Thanks man, now, what's your price to make these open source? ;)
How about all of us that are near our renew date for DevNet just send that renewal money your way instead? We'd get a better return on our investment!
Posted by: Sean McKibben on Jul 20, 2004 1:33am
whaouuuu great....
i was just writing the first lines of a new flash project...
so i have just one question.
WHEN???
:D
Posted by: olivier hericord on Jul 23, 2004 2:31am
Can you give us a release date pls ?
Posted by: James on Aug 9, 2004 5:43am URL: http://www.jemesie.com
One question grant...
When?
Posted by: Paul Hart on Aug 12, 2004 1:58pm
WHENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN haha
Posted by: dave on Aug 18, 2004 9:01pm
I'll second that !!! Some feedback please. Maybe the release strategy a la SP2??
Posted by: Tom on Aug 21, 2004 3:39am
my english is very bad.
but WHEN ???
Posted by: Iteratif on Aug 22, 2004 12:50pm URL: http://iteratif.canalblog.com
Hey Grant, any idea on a release date for these? Maybe put out a subset instead of waiting for the full meal?
Posted by: chicken on Sep 15, 2004 5:50am
Monthly "when" /pester :)
Posted by: cadement on Oct 14, 2004 10:17am
When will it be released...
hopefuly soon? Could you give a rough hint...
Should we wait or use V2 Components if the projekt has to start in the next month?!
Posted by: max0matic on Oct 27, 2004 4:47am URL: http://flashrocket.worldoptimizer.com
i guess this isnt gunna happen eh
Posted by: dave on Oct 30, 2004 6:08pm
Yeah am trying those skinning components with V2 and its a miracle to wait for such a sweet product.
Am sure I wud use it asap..
Posted by: Ari on Nov 1, 2004 10:43pm URL: http://theycallmeari.blogspot.com
amazing thats its possible, to single handedly rewrite the components.
might be biting off a huge project though?
but sounds fantastic if possible
any ideas of when?
why not licence them back to MM
Posted by: Rob on Nov 2, 2004 10:01pm
Great!
Now, there are two features that I love about Flex and will obviously never make their way into Flash V2 Components.... are you planning to implement them??
- Containers + Layout Management
- Data Binding ( with binding chains )
aah one last thing...
while( noNews ) trace( "when!?" + "how much!?" );
Best Regards,
Aldo
Posted by: Aldo Bucchi on Jun 20, 2005 6:28pm