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Is CSS the best metaphor for styling for a UIToolkit? Maybe not

Writing your own UI Toolkit is, if nothing else, educational. As the OpenPyro framework continues to evolve, every time a new feature is added, I look around at prior art in the domain and evaluate the choices made by different frameworks which has been fascinating. Of course, the first framework I look at (since I [...]

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On Toolkits vs Frameworks: Why not both and how OpenPyro does it

I was just catching up on Keith Peter’s blog and one of the posts that really caught my attention was on Toolkits vs Frameworks. The defining difference between the two, as Keith quotes Gamma, is “Toolkits do not attempt to take control for you…”.The Framework vs. Toolkit debate was in my mind when I started [...]

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Optimized List: A pure AS3 List with renderer recycling

One of the things that the Flex List component does pretty well is handle large data collections (Arrays, ArrayCollections, etc). The List uses renderer recycling when displaying data, ie, it creates an itemRenderer only for the items that are displayed and not for each item in the dataProvider. As items scroll offscreen, the renderers associated [...]

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OpenPyro 0.4 released !

I am excited to announce the first official dot release (0.4) of OpenPyro, the open source UI framework I have been working on (on and off) for the last few months. All the information including source code, samples and documentation can be found at OpenPyro.org. I would love to hear some feedback as well. I [...]

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OpenPyro now being ported to Haxe. Can you help ?

Its really awesome to see community interest in OpenPyro, the Flex-lite framework that I have been working on for the last few months. The latest news on that front is an effort to port OpenPyro to HaXe, an open source programming language that can be compiled to a variety of languages like Flash, Javascript, PHP [...]

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OpenPyro wiki updates, and plans going forward

I have been talking a bit around OpenPyro quite a bit in my recent blog posts but I wasn’t sure if the project was gaining traction until MAX SF this year where I actually had more than a few conversations around OpenPyro. Oh wow, that was awesome! But I realize we haven’t been doing a [...]

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Simple OpenPyro example with source: Image Viewer

Work on OpenPyro goes well, and I keep getting people asking me for examples of the framework in use. After receiving another request today on an OpenPyro example, I figured I’d write a quick widget and release it with the source. So check out this very simple Photo Browser app. The source can be found [...]

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Mixing up OpenPyro and Facebook: FacebookTV

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working quite a bit more on OpenPyro. Writing a new UI framwork in a vaccum almost never works, so I needed an app to build using OpenPyro. I had some Facebook API code handy so I figured I’d try something with that. So here is a [...]

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A sneak peek at OpenPyro: A lightweight alternative to Flex

For the last few months, I have worked quite a bit with Flex and at times, the complexity of the framework really makes it hard to work with. I have mentioned my problems with Flex in an earlier post but the gist of it was: A lot of our projects are widgets rather than apps [...]

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