LA AIR - February 6th

Location: RMI - 525 Venezia Avenue, Venice, California 90291

Time to get everyone caught up on the latest Flex and Adobe AIR buzz. We've got Degrafa, Flex 3 (beta 3), AIR (beta 3), and the newly announced Blaze DS. We'll talk about all of those in our night of Flex/AIR fun.

LA AIR is happy to have Juan Sanchez come and present the new Flex Declarative Graphics Framework called Degrafa. Juan is a user interface designer, the creator of ScaleNine and the author behind the majority of themes that are available there. He brings a designer perspective and serves up new ways of pushing the framework.

The focus behind the Declarative Graphics Framework (Degrafa) is to bring the graphics classes up a level to provide a common ground between developer and designer within Flex, and enable the graphics classes to become first class citizens within the Flex framework. Basically Flex can draw graphics, like shapes, much easier and can be done in MXML.

More information on Degrafa can be found at: http://www.degrafa.com

Features of Degrafa:

Draw Shapes - Degrafa has a number of predefined shapes that can be used to create your graphics compositions:

* Rectangles
* Circles
* Ellipses
* Lines
* Polygons
* etc.

Freeform Drawing - If the Degrafa shapes aren’t flexible enough you can create your own using the following, including using SVG path data:

* Arcs (elliptical)
* Bezier Curves (cubic and quadratic)
* Paths
* etc.
* ... or download from an ever growing library.

Draw using segments:

* MoveTo
* LineTo
* ArcTo
* Bezier To
* etc.

Repeaters - Repeat an object to create advanced visuals.
Paint

Add fills or strokes using the following:

* Solid Fill and Stroke
* Gradient Fills and Strokes
* Bitmap Fill (position and repeat)
* Complex Fill (layer and blend fills)
* etc.

Binding & API Access - Degrafa supports the full MXML binding mechanism with runtime access, API access, collection support, etc.
Skins

Degrafa can be used for all your skinning needs. No more ActionScript and/or extending complex classes.

CSS - You may never create a skin again. Do more with CSS:

* background color (solid and gradients)
* background images (position, repeat, layer, and blend)
* border widths (left, top, right, and bottom independently)
* border colors (left, top, right, and bottom independently)
* border radii (left, top, right, and bottom independently)
* etc.

"Degrafa is cool because it provides an easy way to do things
that are normally unnecessarily complicated in Flex..." -- RJ from Colorado