Degrafa is Coming!
It’s about time, right? So, what’s taking so long? Well, our team grew a bit and we’ve spent the time to integrate some extra features that we felt would be important to have in the first release. When we set out to create this framework we definitely had some feature sets in mind, but in many cases the first beta will exceed them.
The public beta will finally be available January 1st under the MIT License. What a great way to start off 2008, right? For the public release, Degrafa will be available on Google Code, which will also provide a bug management system and integration with our new Google Group.
UPDATE: We moved our Google Group here. So if you signed up for the other one that was listed you’ll need to sign up for the new one to get current info. Sorry for the inconvenience.
As we work to polish things off, here’s a feature summary of what will be available in Beta 1. Keep in mind these are all accessible via MXML.
Stay tuned for more info and examples as we get closer to the date.
Shapes
Degrafa has a number of predefined shapes that can be used to create your graphics compositions:
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- Rectangles
- Circles
- Ellipses
- Lines
- Polygons
- etc.
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Freeform
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.
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Segments
Draw using segments:
- ï¾ MoveTo
- LineTo
- ArcTo
- Bezier To
- etc.
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Repeaters
Repeat an object to create advanced visuals.ï¾
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.
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6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Tom Ortega
The big question for me. Will we be able to convert .ai or .fla files into degrafa code?
Dec 12th, 2007
Lordy
Sweet!!
i’m gonna hold off styling our application, till this comes out.
Thanks for the update!
Dec 12th, 2007
juan
@Tom - The big answer is yes. Kinda. We have an AIR app that will read an SVG and convert it to Degrafa MXML. To use it with Illustrator you’d just save the .ai file as and SVG then use the AIR app. We’re also working on converting XAML to Degrafa MXML and back. More on this in future posts.
Dec 12th, 2007
Blue
Hey Guys,
I think what you guys are doing is great…I’m looking forward to the public beta…I did have a question on how your product is different from Adobe’s Thermo that is coming out soon? It seems like you all might be overlapping in features…From what you know about Adobe’s Thermo versus you product could you explain what the differences/similarities might be.
Thank you
Blue
Dec 14th, 2007
juan
Hi Blue,
Good question. Others have asked the same thing. We were planning to do a post on the topic, but without having access to Thermo I can only give an answer based on what I’ve seen from MAX and the videos available online.
First off, Thermo is an application that uses items from the next version of the Flex framework. I assume you are referring to the Graphics Tag that is used to draw objects as you work in Thermo. We are doing that too, but I keep hearing “you can draw basic shapes“ from Adobe. We want to do more than that.
Degrafa was started to be very versatile and robust so it could be used to create skins, UI graphics, data visualization and more without having to use Illustrator, Flash, etc or Drawing API knowledge. We also wanted to be able to do a lot more with CSS (post on that soon).
So, the answer is yes and no. There is some overlap, but without having Thermo in our hands we can’t really say how much, or how little, overlap there is. One difference that we can mention is that Degrafa will be out sooner
Hope that helps.
“You’re my boy Blue!” - Old School
Dec 14th, 2007
Tom Ortega
@Juan
Sweet. That’s the biggest thing we’re trying to solve now, so this is great news! Can’t wait to check it out!
Dec 17th, 2007
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