Creating customizable panel layout

[dave a]

Hi all,
I am completely new to flex, and I'm just beginning to discover its many capabilities.

I'm wondering how easy or difficult it would be to create an application in which panels or widgets could be rearranged by the user, such as on iGoogle or many other customizable sites. I think the arrangement of panels would be saved to a cookie, which I also don't know how to do with flex.

I know that flex has a "DragManager" and I've done a bit of reading on it. However, the process of utilizing the DragManager and the drag event handlers for rearranging panels is not obvious to me.

Is this possible with flex? Is there any tutorial or source code which explains this capability? Thanks for your help in advance!

Many more questions to come.
David

[Richard Oren]

Hi David,

Welcome to the wonderful world of Flex Development. You will find this community is one of the best for collaboration. I think you might be looking for this sort of functionality. Take a look at this link and see if this is what you need.

http://flexlib.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/DockingToolBar/Doc...

http://flexlib.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/DockingToolBar/Mul...

The members of FlexLib are the best in the industry and they have started to create some solutions and posted them on Google Code. So explore the source code also.

http://flexlib.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/

You could use the Local Shared Object to keep track of the users screen config. Instead of using cookies.

Hope this helps,

Richard Oren

[dave a]

Hi Richard,
Thanks much for your reply. I am very excited about learning flex, and I hope to contribute to the community.

The link was informative, and I must take a closer look at it. However, I would like to do this with a frame object. As on igoogle, I envision a page with many different frames, each containing a different tool or "widget". I would like the user to, by dragging and dropping, rearrange these frames, add frames, remove frames, resize frames, and so on. Is there any article which more specifically addresses this issue?

Thanks again!
David

[Richard Oren]

Hi David,

I haven't seen anything quite like that yet. But I did see someone working on a CMS Layout engine recently but I can't seem to remember the Post. If I run into it again I will post the link here.

Good Luck,

Richard

[Greendog]

Hi Richard,

I am looking for the solution like you. Yesterday, I have found a post about FXWidget here. The solution like discovered by Ted Patrick. I am not look at all, but it seem to be solve this problem.

If you have learn some trick from them, it will be good if you come back to share this innovation.