Introduction to
Flex
JUG Genova
September 22, 2009
~
Corrado Alesso
co.alesso@fastwebnet.it

Flex?

Flex is Flash for developers
Kind of a snob definition...
Flex makes Flash developers' life easier
This could not be true if you are a designer...
Flex is Flash development under a
different perspective
More tailored for data driven, desktop-like applications. Remember: it's
just a frontend technology!

From Flash to Flex
You drop the Timeline, graphical editing tools, stage
canvas, visual animations
You gain a component API, a xml-based declarative
language for GUIs (MXML), a more powerful IDE
But the technology under the covers is the very same
(ActionScript and FlashPlayer)

Main Benefits
99% FlashPlayer market penetration
Applications run on Desktop and on
Browser
Browser and OS consistency
Good looking applications by default :)

How a Flex application looks like
ActionScript Code
MXML Code

A 1000 words

Things you need to start Flexing
FlexSDK
OpenSource, 3.4 stable, 4 in beta
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK
FlexBuilder
Optional, well, just like Eclipse, Netbeans and so on are optional for Java
development :)
It's a commercial product by Adobe (from $249)
It's based on Eclipse and you get AS3/MXML/CSS editors, a visual GUI
editor, debugger, profiler, refactoring tools, AIR support, WebServices
support (FlexSDK is included)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flexbuilder3
Docs
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex