Introduction

Flex Builder 2

Flex Builder 2 provides an Eclipse-based environment in which developers can easily create richer, more expressive Flex applications. As with most integrated development environments, Flex Builder has three functional areas: coding, interface design, and debugging.

Flex Builder significantly accelerates coding through code hints (for both ActionScript and MXML), code navigation that helps you quickly find the definition of a method or class, built-in error reporting, context-sensitive help, integration with source control systems (such as CVS), and build tools (such as Ant) for easier team development.

The Design view lets you quickly assemble a basic user interface, apply styles to customize the look and feel of your interface elements, and preview the behavior of your application controls. The Design view is also very accessible to creative professionals, allowing non-coders to create interface assets directly in Flex Builder. Flex Builder also features a constraint-based layout model that provides the control of absolute positioning while still retaining enough flexibility to respond smoothly to resizing.

Flex Builder also has an integrated ActionScript debugger that features a rich perspective to enable you to set breakpoints, step through your code, inspect variables, change variable values, set watches, and monitor console messages. You can also debug Flex and Java applications side-by-side if you are using Flex Builder together with Eclipse's Java tools

For more Information on Flex, please visit http://www.adobe.com/products/flex

ActionScript 3

ActionScript is the scripting language within Flash and is very similar to JavaScript (both follow the ECMAScript standard). ActionScript 3.0 follows the ECMAScript 4 proposal, which means that it is a safer, simpler, and better-performing than previous versions of ActionScript or JavaScript. It also supports type safety so that developers can write unambiguous, easily maintainable code. ActionScript 3.0 consists of two parts: the core language and the Flash Player API. The core language defines the basic programming building blocks: statements, expressions, conditions, loops, and types. The Flash Player API is made up of classes that represent and provide access to Flash Player-specific functionality.

Flash Player 9 also includes a new ActionScript Virtual Machine, which is the engine that executes any ActionScript code sent to the Flash Player. The new ActionScript Virtual Machine (known as AVM2—the old version is known as AVM1) has been built from scratch to support the development of rich Internet applications with significantly better performance (up to ten times faster compared to legacy ActionScript code running on AVM1). Both versions of the AVM are included in Flash Player 9 so that Flash Player 9 can run the latest rich Internet applications quickly and efficiently while maintaining backward compatibility with older Flash content.

For more Information on ActionScript 3, please visit http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/ActionScript_3:overview