Sodium Interactive

I was completely blown away by this video of the new Flex 4 skinning system, so much that it inspired me to get this out there before I’m accused of plagiarism.

Spark is a set of UI and layout components that uses XML for skinning and application mark-up. It’s lightweight, carefully thought out (it’s been in pre-alpha for 6 years so you’d hope so) and definitely a work in progress. I know, I should be using Flex (and I do) but the mad scientist in me just can’t stop tinkering.

Check it out here.

Feedback more than welcome.

Someone posted an amazing news visualisation to the PaperVision3D mailing list today. I’m not sure how much the 3D floating headlines add to the news consuming experience, pretty though it may be. But the rest of the interface is simply gorgeous! Colourful, minimalist, utilitarian designs like this always do things to me. Kind of makes me wish they had an easier way to actually read the stories. Hopefully they have plans on evolving the visualisation side of things to add a bit more structure to the content now they’ve nutted out all the hard stuff.

Make sure you check out the webcam mode if you have one, it selects storied based on whatever you wave around in front of it. Frankie (our Staffordshire Terrier) fell in the top headline/blog category for some reason.