Flex Scheduling Framework
From Adobe Labs
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Overview
The Adobe Consulting team have made available an open-source Scheduling Framework for Flex 2. More than just a calendar component, the Scheduling Framework allows you to create and fully customize any number of Scheduling Components.
The framework is not part of the Flex SDK and there are currently no plans to add the framework as part of any future release of Flex.
Scheduling Framework Roadmap
Our goal in developing the Scheduling Framework is to make it as extensible as possible and for it development to be driven by real projects, not just the samples created to demonstrate its features.
As such, we're releasing this initial version of the Scheduling Framework as a 0.1 Alpha and are seeking community feedback and bugfixes to progress the framework to a 1.0 release.
Because this release is an alpha, we are reserving the right to change the framework API as feedback is given back to us.
Features
Some of the features of the Scheduling Framework are:
- Display and manipulate 1000s of calendar entries
- Define how entries are laid out using the predefined layout manager or by providing your own customized layout manager
- Assign custom renderers that can dictate the complete look and feel of your calendar entries
- Provide renderers in MXML or ActionScript
- "Live" zoom support using zoom API
- Use framework effects such as Zoom and Move to make best use of the expressiveness of a Flex RIA in order to achieve the best user experience possible while navigating the component
- Efficiently add, remove and update entries at runtime
- Assign customized background areas to show office hours, lunch time etc
- Fully stylable
- Ability to select calendar entries with visual highlighting
- Consistent in usage with the Flex Framework, eg. dataProvider driven
- Broadcasts events to help interaction development
- Can be used in MXML or Actionscript
- And more...
Known Bugs
There are known bugs in the framework, but have not formally documented them all. Here are those we have identified:
- Scrolling to left of a calendar and then changing the zoom can cause the calendar entries to be off screen with no way to access them without the scrollbar being present
- Calendar entries can initially appear at the wrong location
We are asking for community feedback and fixes to help us get this framework to a 1.0 release version.
Download
In this 0.1 Alpha version, we're offering the Scheduling Framework as a ZIP download, containing all the source code and samples. As we move towards a release version, we'll package the framework into a downloadable SWC file and a separately downloadable set of samples using that SWC.
Note: Your use of this site including software downloads, submission of comments, ideas, feature requests and techniques on this and other Adobe maintained forums, as well as Adobe’s rights to use such materials, is governed by the Terms of Use.
Sample Usage
Here are some example sample usages of the Scheduling Framework.
ScheduleViewer
ScheduleViewer is the main scheduling framework component. It allows you to render and manipulate schedule entries in an efficient and very customizable way. The following are some sample of its use:
- Basic Sample
- LayoutManager - Simple Layout
- Adding Navigation and Zooming
- Adding Background Areas
- Row Based Schedulers
Timeline
Timeline is an independent control that renders and let users interact with a customizable timeframe. Developers can use this component in combinations other components, eg. to add a timeline to a CalendarViewer component. Here is an example of its use:
We encourage the community to submit their own samples, and we will add more of our own over time.
Documentation
ASDoc is available with the download. Over time, we hope we to produce the following documentation.
- Getting Started Guide
- Using the Timeline
- Developing Advanced Renderers
- Creating customized background areas
