One of the downsides of Flash (7 and 8) regarding components is that its not
easy to change the look and feel, not to mention
skinning, which is a pain.
With Flex 2 this has become soooooo easy.
Everything (or almost) can be done through CSS (internal and external),
including embedding assets (jpg, gif, png, swf, swf library
symbols).
Embedded assets can be used as skins for components, like Buttons for instance.
Here's an example, where I have a ToggleButtonBar containing a few buttons
(these are standard Flex 2 components).
Each button has the same look and feel, defined by a CSS style.
.toggleButton {
upSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#up_skin");
selectedUpSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#up_skin_selected");
overSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#over_skin");
selectedOverSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#over_skin_selected");
downSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#down_skin");
selectedDownSkin: Embed("assets/TabButton.swf#down_skin_selected");
borderStyle: none;
/* hide the default focus rectangle*/
focusThickness: 0;
}
<mx:ToggleButtonBar horizontalGap="5" buttonStyleName="toggleButton"
buttonWidth="100" >
<mx:Button label="Home" width="100" />
<mx:Button label="About" width="100" />
<mx:Button label="Work" width="100" />
<mx:Button label="Downloads" width="100" />
<mx:Button label="Contact" width="100"/>
</mx:ToggleButtonBar>
Doing something similar in Flash requires one to first create a custom
component (no ToggleButtonBar in Flash) which would probably
take a day or 2 to get it right.
This is just *one* aspect of Flex 2. There's lots more.
On top of it all, if you know Flash/XML/CSS, there's hardly any learning curve.
regards,
Muzak
----- Original Message -----
From: "Theodore E Patrick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Flashcoders mailing list'" <flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com>
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 7:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Flashcoders] Why Flex?
>> My question for the Flex people is this, what does Flex bring to the
>> table that I can not already do with 04 Pro (not counting the new AS 3.0)?
>
> Allot!
>
> 1. There are tons of details in building apps in Flash 2004 Pro that just
> get removed when using Flex. All the small painful lessons that you needed
> to know disappear as they are built into the Flex Framework. This allows you
> to focus on the actual application you are building.
>
> 2. Better components and more of them. Containers, VBox, Repeaters, oh my!
>
> 3. Larger applications. Building very large scale applications in Flex is
> very feasible where it was hard to do this with Flash 2004 Pro. You can
> reuse blocks of MXML in Flex as a component.
>
> 4. MXML generates AS Classes. MXML is a code generator, it takes a simple
> XML hierarchy and generates an AS class representing your app just before
> compilation. As MXML is translated before compilation, tags can provide
> embedding of graphics, component generation, and UI generation that is very
> exact and detailed. In Flash the hierarchy of an application is hidden from
> the developer, where in Flex the hierarchy is directly what is added into
> the MXML XML tree. Flex is right aligned.
>
> I felt the same thing about Flex 10 months ago. It took being dropped into a
> Flex project to see it for myself. You can build much larger scale
> applications in Flex than you can in Flash and in Flex they are 20 times
> easier to maintain and change ongoing. Team development is also enhances
> with Flex. As apps are mostly ASCII text, Flex is easy to work with in
> version control.
>
> Take the leap and learn Flex. It is one of the best things you can do long
> term within the Flash Platform. You will loath learning a new toolset at
> first but soon you will be writing application faster than before and with
> less hassle. Plus as you know Flash, you can extend Flex with it!
>
> I though for a while that Flex was going to automate me out of a job. The
> reality is that once you know it, the project scope in Flex is much larger.
> I am working on better projects and earning a good bit having learned Flex.
>
> My 2 Cents,
>
> Theodore Patrick
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