XComponents

XComponents 1.9 Released

2010-05-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

A version 1.9 of the XComponents is now generally available with two new components (XHarveyBalls and XReflector), and a number of enhancements and bugfixes to existing components, particulsly XScorecard (click here for details).

I am really pleased to announce that the kind folks at Antivia have agreed to sponsor the hosting of the XComponents on their site, this will save me considerable time and effort (XComponents are running at almost over 6,500 downloads to date). So in order to download XComponents 1.9 go to www.antivia.com/xcomponents. Having said that the XComponents will remain free to use, neither I nor Antivia will be charging anything for them.

(As always: full disclosure I am an advisor to Antivia on their XWIS product)

The remarkable power of the Xcelsius 2008 SDK

2009-01-29T12:09:00.000-08:00

xlf sample files for models below now available (click to download)

Xcelsius (www.xcelsius.com) is a remarkable, innovative tool which allows anyone who can use Excel to create stunning, interactive Adobe Flex/AIR based visualizations, dashboards and mini-applications through a point-and-click interface without having to write a single line of code.

The latest version, Xcelsius 2008, has many great new features, like the embedded worksheet (dramatically improving the overall design workflow) and the tabbed container component (creating multi-pane dashboards is now a piece of cake). However, one of the biggest changes that, because the product has been re-architected on the Adobe Flex platform, it is now possible for Flex developers to write add-on components for Xcelsius to extend its remarkable capabilities even further.

What is even better is that because this extensibility is build on the Flex / Flash platform, with only a little extra work the many, many existing Flex / Flash components available today can be transformed into Xcelsius components opening them up to an whole new class of user.

To give a hint of just what is possible with the Xcelsius 2008 SDK below I have created a few sample "XComponents", each of which features in one or more of the Xcelsius models below.

If you want to install the XComponents in your version of Xcelsius 2008 you will find the xlx (XceLsius eXtension) file here :-

download XComponents.xlx here

And remember, although the components are written in Flex, once they are installed in Xcelsius the end-user can use them without writing any code, just like all the other standard Xcelsius components.

XGlobe and XScorecard

These components were added in verison 1.5 of the XComponents. XGlobe uses the Papervision3D library to produce a remarkable 3D animated globe and the XScorecard extends the functionality of the XTreeGrid to add a number of new features including traffic light indicators on each KPI.

Click here for a video of how to use the XGlobe.

XYahooMap

The XYahoomap component is a simple extension to the Yahoo Maps Flash control (available here), which provides full map drag, zoom and differing views (map, satelite, etc) of a normal Yahoo Map but now it can be part of an Xcelsius model (clicking on the map markers changes the mini-dashboard and the Xcelsius radio button moves the map from the UK to the US).

You can see here just how easy it is to add one of these maps to an existing Xcelsius 2008 model.

XProgressImage

XProgress image takes two images and uses one to overlay the other to provide a progress indicator. In the Xcelsius designer the user can choose which images they want to overlay and whether progress is shown left to right (as in the pencil) or bottom to top (as in the bottle).

XTree

A common request for Xcelsius is a tree component to allow selection of hierarchical data. Although Xcelsius 2008 does not ship with a tree component out of the box, the SDK allows the standard Flex tree component to be easily added. Again the new component is a full citizen of the Xcelsius world and so it can update other parts of the model as the user clicks on it. The flags in the model are read into the standard Xcelsius slide-show component from http://www.world-flags.net)

XTreeGrid

Sometimes a straightforward tree is not enough and a tree integrated with a data grid is required. Again the Xcelsius 2008 SDK and the flexibility of Flex provide an answer. This example is a staff directory and an associated mini "dashboard", however it could be just as easily be a performance management KPI scorecard. The Flex code for the XTreeGrid is built on concepts and code from the article in James Ward's blog here.

XBulletChart and XSparkline

These two chart types are becoming an increasingly common requirement for dashboards. This time the components are based on the Flex charting library which comes with some versions of Flex.

XGlobe and XScorecard Sample

2009-01-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

The XGlobe and XScorecard shown here are examples of add-on components for Xcelsius 2008 (www.xcelsius.com) which were written with Adobe Flex.

The Flex application you see below was created using point and click only (no coding) from an Excel spreadsheet containing details of the wprlds 50 most populous cities.

To see more XComponents in action go to the main page

Spin the globe to see the other side of the world, click on a marker and open the tree nodes to see details for a city.

XGlobe features video

2008-12-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

The video below runs for about 12 minutes andgoes through most (but not quite all) the features of the XGlobe.

XComponents Version 1.9

2008-12-12T00:06:00.000-08:00

Version 1.9 of the XComponents has two new components, and a number of enhancements and bug fixes to existing components. Download them at http://www.antivia.com/xcomponents.html

Details are :-

XHarveyBalls a new "Harvey balls" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Balls) component

XReflector a new component which will act as a mirrored surface under whatever is above it

XScorecard

change the font and size of the text
background KPI colour indicators
choose from different icons
add custom icons
option to have custom column width reflected at run time
bindable column width so they are dynamic and linkable across different scorecards
Bugfix – custom column width holoured at runtime

XTree

Multi-select option

XYahooMap

New Map centre property to locate map on startup
Label on markets can be different from the text use to locate the maker
Bugfix – custom zoomlevel honoured at runtime
Bugfix – map displays even with no initial markers
Bugfix – no error displayed if geocode fails

XSparkline

Option to have empty value break the line

XWIS from Antivia

2008-09-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

A number of the thousands (!!) of people who have downloaded the XComponents have asked me about point-and-click connectivity from Xcelsius to data in the BOBJ platform because they are finding it a little too hard and a little too time-consuming to do what they need to do with QaaWS or LiveOffice. I did think about starting a project to do this but then events overtook me and Antivia created its Xcelsius WebIntelligence Integration Suite).

XWIS provides "intelligent" Xcelsius components which understand how to directly connect to the BOBJ platform, preserving all the slice, dice and drill already built into the semantic layer. As far as I can tell, ANY Xcelsius project which connects to the BOBJ platform will deliver more functionality at lower cost using XWIS (even when you factor in the cost of the XWIS solution).

If you are interested there are more details and a video demo at the Antivia Web site

(disclosure: I liked XWIS so much that I am now acting as a advisor to Antivia on its future development)

Adding XYahooMap component in an Xcelsius model

2008-07-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

Although add-on components need to be created using Adobe Flex, once they are installed in the designer (which itself is a simple process, for details see here), they are as easy to use as any other Xcelsius component.

As an example the video below shows how it takes less than 40 seconds to integrate an XYahooMap component to an existing Xcelsius 2008 model.

XComponents Version 1.5

2008-05-05T02:49:00.000-07:00

Version 1.5 of the XComponents is now available.

You can get them from the download page at :-

download XComponents.xlx here

This release includes two new components :-

XGlobe - a 3D interactive globe for plotting geographic KPI data
XScorecard - an extension of the XTreeGrid which adds a number of feaures including RGB markers to indicate performance of metrics

(see the model below for a sample)

also in v1.5 are fixes to the original components including :-

Issues with dynamic visibility have been fixed
Issues with binding errors with Flash Player 10 have been fixed
Tree based controls now handle nodes with multiple parents
Tree based controls now handle nodes with XML reserved characters
XProgressImage no longer gives errors on load with the debug flash player
Property sheets are cleaner with the addition of tabbed interface

XGlobe and XScorecard

Installing the XComponents

2008-01-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

A single xlx (XceLsius eXtension) file containing version 1.5 of the XComponents is available here :-

download XComponents.xlx

(If the file downloads as a zip file, don't open it, just rename the file to have an xlx extension, instead of zip, and then install it as below).

download the sample xlfs for the models on the home page

To install the XComponents just select File|Manage Add-Ons from the menu, browse to the xlx file and restart Xcelsius. As in the video below.

If there is no "Manage Add-ons" menu item then you should upgrade to the latest version of Xcelsius, which can be done at

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