Flex and the Interface

Let’s take a look at Adobe Flex, and if you don’t have it you can download a free trial of Flex 3.0 here and if you are a student and can prove your a student you can get Flex for free by clicking here.

Flex is built on top of Eclipse which is used for several different programming platforms. If you have been using ActionScript inside of Flash you will be pleasantly surprised on how much easier it is to program inside of Flex with the code completion it provides. There are a lot of professionals that still like Flash but do all their coding in Flex.

I’m using Flex 3.0 as of this writing but I know they are already getting ready to release Flex 4 so download whichever you would like and let’s get started.

Part 1 The Interface:

Flex Layout

After you get used to the layout of Flex it will become very easy to understand and move around. The top-left side is where all your projects will be located. The lower-left is where your component tab and outline tabs are located. Components become available when you start a MXML project and the Outline shows you the over all layout structure, like the variables and functions that are located in the class that you have open.

At the bottom of the interface you have the Problems tab which is exactly what it says and shows you all the problems that are in the file or project you have open. The console tab is where you get all your print statements, so if you put in a trace statement (which if you don’t know what that means it is a code statement that will let you put a word or a variable in the statement to let you track things. This is handy to find out if you are getting to functions or any other parts of your code) your output will show up here. The debug tab is a little more complicated and it is a detailed problem solver for your code.

The right side will show you all the properties of the component or anything else you have open in an MXML file. It doesn’t show up if you are just using classes or straight ActionScript.

In part 2 we will create a simple project and open and close it.

part 2>>