The Complete Insider’s Guide to Building State-of-the-Art Components with Adobe’s Flex 4 Platform
Using Adobe’s Flex 4 framework, developers can build rich, immersive solutions more easily and quickly than ever. Much of Flex 4’s remarkable power is based on its component-based approach. Adobe provides many components “out of the box,” but you can accomplish even more by building your own. In Developing Flex 4 Components, world-renowned Flex and Flash developer Mike Jones thoroughly demystifies all facets of Flex component development, showing how to quickly create and deliver high-value components to the widest possible audience.
Jones introduces the Flex 4 component architecture, reviews its built-in components, and shows how they can be extended or incorporated into new components. Next, he walks through developing components from scratch, covering issues ranging from events to skinning. Finally, he turns to distribution, introducing best practices for everything from integration to documentation.
Jones draws on nearly 15 years’ experience developing with Flex and Flash. You’ll find extensive sample code, plus dozens of practical tips that are available nowhere else. After reading this book, you'll be able to
· Set up your Flex and Flash Builder development environment
· Understand key differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4 component frameworks
· Learn how Flex components are typically structured, developed, and rendered
· Leverage ActionScript and MXML to quickly create components
· Implement view states, transitions, effects, and events
· Manipulate and store complex data collections
· Use Flex 4’s FXG and MXMLG to support skinning and styling
· Create components with Flash Professional CS5’s drawing tools
· Integrate components with Flash Builder
· Package components for easy distribution with or without source code
· Streamline implementation with manifests, design view extensions, and metadata
If you’re an experienced Flash, Flex, or AIR developer, this book will help you create any component you can imagine–and deliver solutions others can only dream about.
Table of Contents:
Preface xvii
PART I: OVERVIEW AND INSTALLATION
Chapter 1 Getting Started 3
Flex 3
What Is Flex? 4
Flex SDK 4
Flex Development Versus Flash Authoring 5
Flash Builder Has No Drawing Tools or Timeline 5
Flex SWFs Are Massive 6
Flash Builder Has No Symbol Library 6
Flash Builder 6
What Does This Actually Mean to You? 7
Wrapping the Flex SDK 7
Installing Flash Builder 7
Downloading Flash Builder 8
Starting the Installation of Flash Builder 8
Launching Flash Builder 12
Creating Your First Project 12
Summary 16
Chapter 2 The Flex 4 Components 17
Components: A Potted History 17
Using Flex Components 19
Component Family Tree 20
Control Components 23
Navigator Components 31
Layout Components 34
Charting Components 37
AIR-Specific Components 37
Summary 39
Chapter 3 Anatomy of a Component 41
Component Life Cycle 41
Understanding the Structure 43
Component Constructor 44
Inherit, Composite, or Rolling Your Own 51
UIComponent 51
Something for Nothing 52
UIComponent for MXML 53
IMXMLObject 55
Template Components 56
Deferring Instantiation 56
Summary 60
PART II: DEVELOPING COMPONENTS
Chapter 4 Creating Your First Component 63
MyFirstComponent 63
Creating the Class 65
Core Component Methods 66
Adding Some Form 66
Showing Yourself Off 68
Testing It Out 69
This Belongs to Me 70
Sibling Rivalry 73
MyFirstComponent (Revised) 74
Distilling MyFirstComponent (Halo) 74
Slimming Down with MXML (Halo) 76
Distilling MyFirstComponent Down (Spark) 80
Weapon of Choice 82
Summary 82
Chapter 5 Managing States 83
What Are States? 83
Flex’s View States 84
Creating States in MXML 86
Assigning States 87
stateGroups 87
Working with States in ActionScript 90
Overrides 91
Creating and Destroying View States 98
Adding States to Components 101
Worth Noting 103
Summary 103
Chapter 6 Effects and Transitions 105
Effects 105
Effect Types 105
Working with Effects 111
Declaring Effects 111
Triggering Effects 111
Orchestrating Effects 114
Working with MotionPath and Keyframe 117
Transitions 119
Summary 123
Chapter 7 Working with Metadata 125
What Is Metadata? 125
How Do I Use Metadata? 126
Working with Metadata 128
Exposing Information About Your Component 128
Describing Events 131
Exposing Styles and Effects 132
Embedding Assets 133
Binding Data 134
Setting Defaults 135
Working with Skins 137
Excluding Component Attributes 138
Altering and Deprecating Properties and Classes 139
Providing an Icon 140
And the Rest 140
Metadata in MXML 140
Creating Your Own Metadata Tags 141
Are Metadata Tags Classes? 141
Summary 145
Chapter 8 Events and Event Handling 147
Why Events? 147
Subscribers Versus Watchers 147
Asynchronicity 148
Event Flow 148
Dispatching Events 150
Adding Event Listeners 152
Custom Events 152
Extending the Event Class 153
Cloning Events 154
Dealing with Event Priority 155
Event Priority Constants 155
Countering Events 156
Event Propagation 157
Prevent Defaults 158
Summary 159
Chapter 9 Manipulating Data 161
Defining Component Data 161
Data Providers 161
KISS 162
Managing Data 163
Collections 165
Displaying Data 177
Data Renderers 177
Rendering the UI 178
Linking itemRenders to External Data 178
Summary 185
Chapter 10 Skinning and Styling 187
Spark Versus Halo 187
Spark Skin Life Cycle 187
Where Do I Start? 189
Working with SkinnableComponent 189
partAdded(), partRemoved() 189
getCurrentSkinState() 192
Creating Component Skins 193
FXG and MXMLG 194
Creating a Component Skin 194
Drawing Nonlinear Content 198
Spark Skins and Halo Components 200
Working with Properties and Styles 202
Using CSS 202
Custom Namespaces 202
Descendant Selectors 203
ID Selectors 204
Pseudo Selectors 204
Summary 205
Chapter 11 Creating Flex Components with Flash Professional CS5 207
Picking a Starting Point 207
Starting with Flash Professional 207
Starting with Flash Builder 4 209
Implementing States 212
Implementing Transitions 213
Controlling Component Resizing 215
Bounding Boxes 216
External Manipulation 216
Creating Component Visual Assets 218
Putting It All Together 219
Adding the Transition Animations 220
Properties and Methods 220
Metadata 221
Events 222
Externalizing Component Classes 223
Container Components 226
Summary 227
PART III: DISTRIBUTION
Chapter 12 The Flex Library Project 231
Packaging Your Component 231
SWC Format 231
library.swf 232
catalog.xml 232
Locale 233
Assets 234
Working with the Flex Library Project 234
Creating a Flex Library Project 234
What If It All Goes Wrong 242
compc 242
Summary 243
Chapter 13 Component Integration in Flash Builder 4 245
Why Integrate with Flash Builder? 245
What Can I Integrate With? 246
Panel Integration 246
Design View Extensions 253
Live Previews 261
Setting Default Styles 262
Summary 263
Chapter 14 Documentation 265
Why Should I Document Code? 265
Last to the Party, First to Leave 265
Documentation Is Boring 266
My Code Is Easy to Read 266
OK I Get It, Enough Already 266
Commenting Your Code 266
Basic Comment Types 267
ASDoc Comment Blocks 267
ASDoc Tags 268
HTML Formatting 272
Special Characters 273
Metadata Comments 274
Documenting MXML 274
Bypassing Documentation 275
Generating Your Documentation 276
Command-Line Document Generation 276
Generating Documentation in Flash Builder 277
Getting to Grips with Ant 281
Summary 288
Appendix A Flex Resources 291
Blogs 291
Adobe Blogs 291
Independent Blogs 292
Resource Sites 292
Frameworks 293
Useful Tools and Extensions 293
Adobe Tools 294
Third-Party Tools 294
Logwatcher 294
Regular Expression Tools 294
Index 295
About the Author :
Mike Jones has 14 years of experience developing for the Flash Platform. He was first introduced to Flash (then called Futurewave Splash) in November 1996, by his then Visual Arts studio manager while at a university. Suffice it to say, Flash made sense to Mike, and he literally ran with it and never looked back.
These days, Mike is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe and spends most of his time speaking with customers, presenting, and blogging and tweeting about the Flash Platform. Although developing is Mike’s first love, he never refuses the chance to speak at user groups and conferences about components, the Flex framework, AIR, and the Flash Platform in general.
A regular speaker at Flash on the Beach on topics such as “Flex Development in 60 Minutes” and Flex component development, anyone who has met Mike knows he speaks passionately about these technologies, which is the same passion that has kept him engaged as Flash and Flex have grown over the years. When he isn’t speaking or developing, Mike posts his thoughts and musings on Flash technologies on his blog (http://blog.flashgen.com). He lives in Haslemere, England, with his wife Emma, new baby daughter Freya, and his cat JPeg.
