Flex 2

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Flex 2

• Were Not in Kansas Anymore!
• or Welcome to Flex
• Theo Rushin Jr
• theo_at_teratech.com
• TeraTech, Inc.

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Speaker Information

• Windows-based Developer - Since 85
• Senior ColdFusion MX Developer - Since 99
• Technical Instructor - Since 85
• Flash Developer - Since 99
• Flex Developer Since 05

• Expert Snowboarder Since 00

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What is Flex?

• Adobe Flex 2 is a powerful application
  development solution for creating and delivering
  cross-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs)
  within the enterprise and across the web.
• David Gassner

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What is Flex? (cont.)

• Its a programming framework
• Its an Eclipse based IDE
• Its a set of server-side data services

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Why are we here
2004
WEB APPLICATIONS
1998
1992
CLIENT/SERVER
MAINFRAME
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What are the benefits?
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Flex 2 Product Line
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What do I need?

• Download the Flex Builder 2 Trial
• This includes
• Flex 2 SDK
• Flash Player 9
• Flex Builder Plug-in

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What do I need? (cont.)

• Alternatives?
• Download the FREE Flex 2 SDK
• Download Eclipse 3.1.1 or 3.1.2
• Download the Flex Builder 2 Trial

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Your Journey Begins Here!
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Flex Builder 2 IDE

• Flex Builder 2 is an Eclipse based IDE for
  developing rich Internet applications (RIAs) with
  the Adobe Flex framework.

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Programming Languages

• You use two languages to write Flex applications
  MXML and ActionScript.

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Programming Languages (cont.)

• MXML is an XML markup language that you use to
  lay out user-interface components. You also use
  MXML to declaratively define nonvisual aspects of
  an application, such as access to data sources on
  the server and data bindings between
  user-interface components and data sources on the
  server.
• MXML-defined applications are compiled into SWF
  files and rendered by the Adobe Flash Player 9

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Programming Languages (cont.)

• ActionScript is an object-oriented procedural
  programming language, based on the ECMAScript
  (ECMA-262) edition 4 draft language
  specification.

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Programming Languages (cont.)

• Developers can use ActionScript to implement
  custom behavior within their Flex applications.
• A declarative language like MXML is not
  appropriate for coding what you want to happen
  when the user clicks a button, for example. For
  that, you need to use a procedural language like
  ActionScript, which offers executable methods,
  various types of storage variables, and flow
  control such as conditionals and loops.

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Layout, Constraints and Navigation

• The containers provided with the Flex framework
  let developers design complex, adaptive layouts
  with ease.
• Panel
• Canvas
• Hbox, Vbox
• Etc.

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Layout, Constraints and Navigation

• Flex Builder features a constraint-based layout
  model that provides the control of absolute
  positioning while still retaining enough
  flexibility to respond smoothly to resizing.

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Layout, Constraints and Navigation

• Flex features navigational containers that
  control user movement, among multiple children
  where the children are other containers.
• TabNavigator
• Accordian
• Etc.

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Visual Controls

• User-interface components, such as Button,
  TextArea, and ComboBox controls allow you to
  quickly define a rich and engaging interface for
  you users.
• Label
• Checkbox
• Etc.

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Events

• User interaction with your application can
  generate events. You can "listen" for these
  events in your code by adding event listeners,
  sometimes referred to as event handlers.
• The Flex event model is based on the Document
  Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Model.

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Data-Driven Controls

• Several Flex controls can take input from a data
  provider, an object that contains data.
• DataGrid
• Tree
• HorizontalList
• Etc.

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Server-side Communication

• Flex 2 provides a new messaging infrastructure
  for building data-rich applications.
• There are three Flex features that are designed
  for moving data to and from applications
• RPC services,
• the Data Management Service,
• and the Message Service.

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Server-side Communication

• RPC services
• Lets you create applications that make
  asynchronous requests to remote services that
  process the requests and then return data to your
  Flex application.

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Server-side Communication

• Data Management Services
• Lets you create applications that work with
  distributed data, and lets you manage large
  collections of data and nested data
  relationships, such as one-to-one and one-to-many
  relationships.
• Requires Flex Data Services

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Server-side Communication

• Message Services
• lets you create applications that can send
  messages to and receive messages from other
  applications, including Flex applications and
  Java Message Service (JMS) applications.
• Requires Flex Data Services

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Questions?

• Email me at
• theo_at_teratech.com

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Flex Resources

• Flex 2 product line
• http//www.adobe.com/products/flex/
• Flex 2 stencils for Microsoft Visio
• http//www.digimmersion.com/
• Adobe Flex News
• http//weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/index.cfm?query
  byMostRecent
• Flex.Org
• http//www.flex.org/

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Thoughts for today

• Learn
• Share
• Have FUN!
• Beware of the Flying Monkeys!