Rob Bateman, who works for the BBC, (who worked on the BBC’s excellent US Elections Map) posted this on the flash components mailing list today:
“The flash development
team at bbc news interactive (which i am a part of) is planning to
release the component set we currently work with on our interactive
content. This will be on external website(s) such as macromedia
exchange, but the release will be under GPL license, and will cost
absolutely nothing!! Not only that, but we will be supplying FULL
flash documentation and diagrammatic uml of ALL classes and
structures, again, completely free of charge. The component set is
called smx, and feature highlights include Proper Re-skinning (ie. all
components, all elements, all from the same base classes, all from
library objects that follow the same rules, etc etc), Properly
Functioning Livepreviews, compatible with Flash 6 AND Flash 7,
Optimisations to provide the same functionality of mx components in ~a
quarter of the filesize with ~double the speed, DataComponents like
XmlLoader and NodeBinder that are much more streamlined than their mx
counterparts whil retaining the same functionality, and useful
standard components such as tabpanel and slider that are still
(amazingly) omitted from the basic mx set.
“
You can read the full text of Rob’s email here. It sounds like a very promising prospect, and knowing the BBC, there’s going to be lots of good documentation. I wonder though – if you haven’t paid your TV licence, can they stop you using these components?