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Adobe Flex Builder 3 Review |
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Written by John Tang
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008 |
 Adobe Flex Builder 3 (FB3) is a fine a product. You would expect a
good product that is based on the excellent Eclipse platform. Any
programmer who has used the Eclipse platform will be productive with
Flex Builder 3 in very short time. The code editing window has the
usual code completion, color syntax highlight, and debugging that is
common to the Eclipse platform. The familiarity of the Eclipse
platform provides a very low learning curve to using FB3.
Another nice benefit of using the Eclipse platform is the many plugins you can use to extend the functionality of the integrated development environment (IDE). I downloaded plugins to do PHP and Java programming. I now have one IDE for Flex, PHP, and Java. This will come in handy when more complex Flex applications are developed. Flex is great at processing XML files. The files can be generated via web service calls to a PHP or Java back end. You can use any back end technology of course.
So what is Flex and what value does FB3 provide?
Flex is based on MXML and ActionScript (Don, I need a link to the ActionScript articles here). The MXML is an XML file with ActionScript code. Developers who have used HTML and JavaScript.will find the MXML/ActionScript combo to be similar in design. MXML like HTML provides the mark up. ActionScript like JavaScript provides the scripting capabilities. However, MXML and ActionScript are much, much more powerful than HTML and JavaScript. MXML/ActionScript produce rich internet application (RIA).
FB3 is an IDE that helps create MXML and ActionScript files. FB3 also automates the debugging, building, and deployment of the SWF file. FB3 comes with prebuilt components that facilitate fast prototyping and development of RIA.
There are two versions of FB3: standard and professional versions. The professional version comes with an advanced datagrid and charting components. It also comes with a a profiler. If you want to build a really snazzy application using charts or datagrids then the professional version is worth it.
The FB3 standard version make lack some features of it’s professional breathen but it far from weak. In fact it is a steal for $249. It has a good deal amount of features including AIR code hinting and completion, AIR development, standard datagrid, drag and drop programming, and version control. Click here (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/upgrade/) for a list of features.
You might be wondering what is AIR?
AIR is an acronym for Adobe Integrated Runtime. Rich Internet Applications normally run within a browser with the help of a plugin. Adobe Flash for example requires the Flash run time. AIR allows rich internet applications to run as a desktop applications. The investment used to learn and build RIA can be extended to the desktop with AIR.
There are two methods to code in FB3. You have the standard view of typing in the code. The second option is to use the design view. You can then drag components such as buttons, text, or datagrids onto the workspace. If you have used Visual Basic then you get an idea of FB3’s drag and drop programming.
You can’t really appreciate FB3 unless you actually use it. Look for a future tutorial using this IDE on this web site.
You can click here to visit Adobe's Flex website.
About John Tang
John Tang's college roommate convinced him to go into IT since
computing was his passion. He studied Applied Mathematics at UCLA but
always had a love of programming. He worked at a research lab on the
UCLA campus where he learned Fox Pro, SQL, and local area networking.
His first "real" job was at Ernst & Young where he did mainframe
programming with Cobol and client server development with Powerbuilder,
Sybase. He has been working as a web programmer since 1999 starting
with Java, HTML, JavaScript, and Oracle before migrating to PHP and
MySQL.
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