Tony MacDonell - Teknision: Flash for Flex

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Flash for Flex

We have been spending quite a bit of time lately ramping up our Flex skills around the office for both Flex 1.5 and Flex 2. We have been focused mainly on developing custom components in Flash for use in Flex. Seems that most of the Flex work that we are being approached on is up that alley.

Now while the process is quite straight forward, I have found that there are a few annoyances that come with getting into this. The are small but still worth mentioning.

1/ Documentation:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flex/

The usual issue of course, but while there are some resources in relation to getting started on basic components, very little exists when it comes to what I would consider an advanced component. Extending containers, custom layout routines for containers, etc. Containers I have found to be the most unclear part of the documentation.

You find yourself trying to dig through the few Flex classes that are bundled in the Flex component development package, and many of those are precomiled, so you have to do alot of guess work.

So ultimately, I definitely think there is alot of room for more documentation and tutorials on component development for the Flash for Flex scene.

2/ Exporting SWC from Flash

Now this process again is pretty straight forward, however again I have a few complaints about SWC development and export from Flash 8.

First, you have to bind the class to the component in two places. 1 in the Linkage properties, and again in the Component Definition properties. This is no big deal, but it is annoying. They could eliminate the one in component properties. Save us a step.

The other annoyance is linkage items in a SWC file. If I am developing a component I have to make sure that any linkage item is included within the component. They say in the docs, that you should create an assets layer and put an instance of each linkage item on a frame. You then move that frame out of the way and put a stop action on the timeline.

This is doable I guess, but it is really messy. There has to be a better way to designate that you want the items to export with the SWC.

So anyways not huge deals here, but I think as the popularity of Flex grows, this process will become a little bit more important to refine.

9 Comments:

Anonymous said...

"
First, you have to bind the class to the component in two places. 1 in the Linkage properties, and again in the Component Definition properties. This is no big deal, but it is annoying. They could eliminate the one in component properties. Save us a step.
"
As long as they keep the ability to add your own custom live preview SWF. Adding the class to the Component Definition means the LP SWF is auto-generated from your source. But at times you want to create a separate SWF, which can do more (or less). While you can add conditional code to your class for this, it can get pretty messy at times.

"
There has to be a better way to designate that you want the items to export with the SWC.
"
Hopefully this will change in blaze. It's something that tripped me up for a while when extending MM comps.

Hiding resources in another frame is simply a hack to me. I understand why that's required, but I also know they need to change the process to make it easier. You need far less, or at least less complicated, documentation if the process is intuitive. Maybe a wizard?

8:39 AM

Anonymous said...

Adding the items in the assets layer is just one of those component framework oddities - its a pain in the ass and it would be nice to assume that because you are extending that class, you will be requiring the assets associated with the class. It does reinforce the self-contained idea tho, drop all the assets in there somewhere and you are ensured that they will be there when you need them.

That item trips up people the most, I like derek discovered that while extending the MM list component to be a draggable list. Not sure what would be a better implementation of that- sometimes you want to change or add visual assets - sometimes, like the stupid datagrid, you just want to override a method that draws that gay header gradient.

6:52 PM

Anonymous said...