Extending QNX TileList: Liquid Tile List

After I tried the available list components from QNX UI library for PlayBook development, my fist question was: how can I customize both the look and feel, and the functionality of these components? In this post, I will show you how you can extend the TileList and AlternatingCellRenderer QNX components to change the UI and add additional functionality.

By default, a TileList looks like this:

You use the dataProvider property to set the data, and its default renderer (CellRenderer) expects the data to be an object that has a String property called label. And this property will be used to display the text for each tile. You control can control the number of tiles by using the columnCount property, and you can set the width and the height of the tiles by using columnWidth and rowHeight properties. You use the cellPadding property to control the space between the tiles.

This is pretty cool. But what if you want to display more complex data? Let’s say you want to have a picture, label, and some graphic? Obviously you’ll have to extend the default renderer to do this. Here is what I have in my mind:

March 7, 2011 | Filed Under AIR, PlayBook, Tutorials | 1 Comment

About Adobe AIR and Flash Player Incubator

Two days ago (on February 27th) we introduced a new program called “Adobe AIR and Flash Player Incubator”. This happened at the same time as the launch of the “Molehill” 3D APIs for AIR and Flash Player public preview. And I think “Molehill” stole the thunder and not many of you paid attention to the announcement of the incubator program.

In short, this program offers a technology preview of the Flash Player and Adobe AIR runtimes. Anyone can access this program; there is no need to apply and wait to get accepted – this differs from how the prerelease programs are run.

It also means that if you get involved you can:

test your applications early against these bleeding-edge capabilities to see if they break or perform well
you can give us feedback, so together we can create better runtimes
you can try out and play with the new APIs well ahead of the public release, so you are prepared to use them live in your applications right from day one

There is one thing I want to add to this: keep in mind that not all the features are guaranteed to make it into the final bits. However, now, more than ever, you can work with us to shape the future runtimes in terms of capabilities, APIs, and features.

So, if you make a living creating apps for Flash Player or Adobe AIR, go to the Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Incubator page, check for the new features (“Molehill” and Cubic Bezier Curves) and add this blog to your RSS reader to get notifications about new bits posted to the Incubator.