Flex DataGrid Replacement

Well, I’ve been working with Marc Hughe’s on my day job and I’d been working with the Flex2 DataGrid component for quite a while now. It’s been nothing less than pure torture. My apologies to the person(s) responsible for creating it if that offends you guys, but nothing has worked the way I would have ever guessed or anticipated. It’s wasted more of my work hours than I care to recall at this point and all I’ve done is found “work arounds” for what should seemingly be very simple to do with it.

Well, I mention Marc because he finally got sick of it as well. He’s finally gone and created his own (which he’s threatened to do for quite a while now) and the video demo of it is enough for me to say this thing is looking very VERY cool!

I would suggest, that if you’re as excited about this as I am, beg and plead with him via posts on his blog and email to finish and release it!! Nicely of course!

Here’s a list of some of the features he’s listed:

# Focused on data entry instead of data display.
# Full keyboard navigation

    * Arrow or tab keys to move between cells
    * When editing a cell, arrows move cursor instead of cells

# "Placeholder" rows.

    * Automatically created as they're needed.

    * Dimmed out rows that aren't in the dataprovider until they're edited.
    * Uses a IFactory to create your value objects on the fly so you get any field validation that your value object implements.

# Partitions

    * You can partition your data for display any way you like, independent of how it's stored.
    * Each partition can have different default values for fields.
    * A row can be in 1 or more partitions.
    * Expandable/Collapsible

# Autocompletion

    * Comes standard just by specifying a list of possible values.

# Custom item renderers/editors

    * Enhanced functionality if your editor implements a special interface, but that isn't required.