A question about Periodic table design in Flex

Question

Hi all,

I now need to design a chemistry periodic table. I will have a set of few elements that have been chosen by the user,and that should be reflected on the periodic table by making these few elements clickable.

So when the user clicks on these few elements,corresponding explanation text will pop up on the text area outside the periodic table.

Could anyone suggest me a good way of doing this?I now have two approaches:

1. Making all the elements of the periodic table buttons,so only the buttons that are within the set are enabled(clickable),while others are disabled.

2. Embedding a static periodic table picture,and do things there(don't know exactly how yet).

Please feel free to comment on and suggest, thanks.

Answer 1

Buttons would probably be the easiest route. If you just have a clickable image, you have to manually calculate the boxes of each element in the table to figure out what they clicked on. With buttons, you only have to position the buttons, you don't have to do hit testing.