Adobe Flex is the tool of choice for many web developers when it comes to building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Developers are picking up Flex with great speed. One of the reasons for this is that Flex programming is relatively easy to learn if you’re already familiar with XHTML.
I’ll provide you with some essential Flex resources – Flex components, Flex Skins & Themes, Online Flex Apps, Flex Frameworks and Flex Tutorials.
Tour de Flex is a desktop application for exploring Flex capabilities and resources, including the core Flex components, Adobe AIR and data integration, as well as a variety of third-party components, effects, skins, and more.
Deft “focuses on ActionScript components created in support of the various projects within the Dojo Toolkit (mostly for DojoX). Deft source files are well organized based in part on the organization of other Dojo Toolkit projects, as well as the package structure required by the Flex compiler. Most Flex applications are based on the Flex AS3 Application class, which forces you to write at least one “controlling” MXML file in order compile your code. Instead of this, Deft components inherit primarily from the Sprite class — which allows you to write pure ActionScript code.”
FlexBook can act as a container, allowing the developer to flip through its children components, FlexBook can be driven by a list of data and an itemRenderer, like a List control or DataGrid, FlexBook Supports a wide variety of configuration options. FlexBook supports full transparency on its pages.
The AutoComplete control is an enhanced TextInput control which pops up a list of suggestions to the user based on the characters entered. These suggestions are to be provided by setting the dataProvider property of the control.
This article barely skimmed the surface of the Flex framework, although we did cover the basics of what the framework provides, and how MXML and ActionScript 3.0 work together. While this was a very gentle introduction to the concepts behind Flex, it should give you enough grounding in the concepts to go forth and experiment on your own.
A simple blog reader in 23 lines of MXML code to use as a tutorial.
Have a good read!
