While developing our latest project we needed to display a quite large set of thumbnails. I started out by using the mx:TileList component for this, but soon discovered that scrolling a whole row at a time could be disorienting. I turned to another (set of) components: mx:Tile and mx:Repeater and got smooth scrolling. This presented me with another problem though: all thumbnails in the mx:Tile loaded at once - even if the ones not visible. This behavior differs from the mx:TileList which only loads what's needed (i.e. visible). So, which one is the best choice? On one hand we have the scrolling and one the other we have loading issues. We ended up using mx:Tile and a repeater, controlling the loading behavior ourselves, simply because we needed a really smooth experience scrolling though the thumbnails. This meant more work, but we have to remember that we're designing for the user, not the developer.

Tags: adobe, gui, flex builder