After quite a bit of work, I’m relieved to present a beta release for the next version of my TreeMap component for Flex. It took me a while, but I reworked much of the core item renderer code to optimize performance, improve maintenance tasks, and generally make it a better component for everyone to use. For full details, visit the TreeMap project page and grab the new build from the downloads section. The package is marked 2.0.0 BETA.
One of the features I’d like to highlight is the new header renderer. The most obvious change is the new zoom button. Because the headers may be selected (when the branchesSelectable
property is set to true), a separate zoom button is needed to differentiate these actions. Additionally, you might notice another interesting change in the example linked below. Choose the “Slice-and-Dice” layout, and you’ll see that some of the headers have a little arrow after any text that gets truncated. Roll the mouse over the header, and it will grow with animation to its optimal size, revealing the full text and the zoom button. A drop shadow makes it pop out a bit to help differentiate the header from the surrounding component. With particularly complex data providers, this feature helps usability enormously because the headers often become very small, which hides parts of the text and the icons on the zoom buttons too.
As with all beta software, a word of warning. This component is not completely tested, the documentation is obviously incomplete, and you should use this in production apps at your own risk. I did my best to get everything stable, but obviously, this is the very first release of some new code, so I know there will be bugs. If you’re feeling adventurous, though, I hope it works well for you. Should you see any strange behavior, please file a bug report so that I can make the next release better! If you have any questions, send them to the new flextreemap discussion group I set up recently so that others can learn too.