Unit-IV - Flash Player - Flex framework - MXML introduction - Action script introduction - Working with Action script - Flex data binding - Common UI components using Data grids - Tree controls - Pop-up controls Building RIA

Supports ActionScript 3.0 ■ Object-oriented scripting programming language ■ Compliant with ECMAScript standard – In 2005 Macromedia chaired the ECMAScript committee and Adobe continues to drive evolution of ECMAScript Flash Player 9

Includes new, optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) to execute the ActionScript code ■ Built from the ground up to work with ActionScript 3.0 ■ Significantly faster than earlier versions ■ Full runtime error reporting – In earlier versions many runtime errors would fail in a graceful, but silent fashion ■ Industry standard debugging ■ Stronger compile-time type checking

New language elements added ■ E4X (ECMAScript for XML), which adds XML as a native data Type ■ Regular expressions ■ Implements event handling based on W3C DOM Events standard

TOOLS USED -> Flex Builder 2 -> Flex Builder 3 -> Flex Builder 4 ((code named Gumbo) will be released in 2009 )2009

File Format: Shockwave Flash

Benefits of using Flex -> Enhanced user experience -> A complete environment -> Common deployment environment -> Enterprise-class features -> Eliminate page loads -> Standards-based architecture -> Cross- browser Compatibility

List of RIA Platforms/Approaches -> Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR -> Backbase -> Curl -> Google's GWT framework -> Java applets -> Java applications -> JavaFX -> JavaScript / AjaxAjax -> Microsoft ActiveX controls -> Microsoft Silverlight -> Mozilla Prism -> OpenLaszlo -> REBOL 2.6 and Seaside for Smalltalk

Comparison between AJAX and Flex

When a project is created, a number of files and folders are automatically created ■ bin-debug folder: Where your compiled application resides ■ html-template folder: Where the html wrapper page resides ■.settings folder: Where some project configuration files reside ■.actionScriptPoperties,.flexProperties and.project files: Project configuration files ■ src folder: Where MXML files and other asset folders reside ■ libs folder: Where custom class files can reside ■ A main application file

Creating data bindings between components Data binding is the process of binding the data of one object to another object Two ways to perform a binding: ■ Curly braces syntax ( { } ) ■ tag Assigning instance names: Most MXML tags refer to classes ■ When you use the tag, you create an instance of the class Use the id property to assign an instance name ■ Allows you to refer to the object created

Creating data bindings Using the curly braces syntax ■ Assigns a property a dynamic instead of literal value ■ Uses a broadcast/listener method Using the tag ■ Specify the source and destination property values <mx:Binding source="labelTwo.text" destination="labelThree.text"/>