ADOBE® FLEX® BUILDER™ 3: USING ADOBE FLEX BUILDER 3

ADOBE® FLEX® BUILDER™ 3: USING ADOBE FLEX BUILDER 3

by Adobe Systems
Released February 2008
Publisher(s): Adobe Systems
ISBN: 00120090002SI

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Book description

Adobe® Flex® Builder™ is an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing applications that use the Adobe® Flex® framework, MXML, Adobe® Flash® Player 9, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe® LiveCycle™ Data Services ES, and the Adobe® Flex® Charting components.

Flex Builder is built on top of Eclipse, an open-source IDE, and provides all the tools you need to develop Flex and ActionScript applications. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X, and Linux, and is available in several versions. Installation configuration options let you install Flex Builder as a set of plug-ins in an existing Eclipse workbench installation or to create an installation that includes the Eclipse workbench.

Table of contents

  1. Chapter 1: Learning Flex Builder
    1. Using Flex and Flex Builder documentation
    2. Getting the most from the Flex and Flex Builder learning resources
    3. Using the Flex Builder help system
      1. Searching Help
      2. Using Help bookmarks
      3. Changing the Help viewer font size
      4. Using the Flex Start page
  2. Chapter 2: About Flex Builder
    1. What you can do with Flex Builder
    2. Flex Builder versions
    3. Flex Builder configurations
    4. Activating Flex Builder
      1. Managing Flex licenses
  3. Chapter 3: Flex Builder Workbench Basics
    1. About the workbench
    2. About Flex Builder editors
      1. Code hinting
      2. Code navigation
      3. Code formatting
      4. Find references and code refactoring
    3. About Flex Builder perspectives
      1. The Flex Development perspective
      2. Flex Development perspective in Design mode
      3. The Flex Debugging perspective
      4. The Flex Profiling perspective
      5. Other useful workbench views
    4. Workbench menus, toolbars, and shortcuts
      1. The workbench toolbar
      2. The MXML editor toolbar
      3. The CSS editor toolbar
      4. Using keyboard shortcuts
    5. Extending the Flex Builder workbench
  4. Chapter 4: Working with Projects
    1. About Flex Builder projects
      1. Project types
        1. Flex projects
        2. ActionScript projects
        3. Flex library projects
      2. Projects in the Flex Navigator view
      3. Project resources
    2. Creating Flex projects
      1. Creating a Flex project with no server
      2. Creating a Flex project with ASP .NET
      3. Creating a Flex project with J2EE
      4. Creating a Flex project with ColdFusion
      5. Creating a Flex project with another server
    3. Managing projects
      1. Setting Flex project properties
      2. Importing projects
      3. Exporting projects
      4. Exporting Adobe AIR application installer
      5. Moving a project from one workspace to another
      6. Deleting projects
      7. Closing and opening projects
      8. Switching the main application file
      9. Managing project application files
    4. Managing project resources
      1. Creating folders and files in a project
      2. Deleting folders and files
      3. Moving resources between projects in a workspace
      4. Refreshing resources in the workspace
      5. Linking to resources outside the project workspace
        1. Using a path variable to link to resources
      6. Adding resource folders to the project source path
      7. Alternatives to using project references
      8. Viewing resource properties
    5. About ActionScript projects
      1. Creating ActionScript projects
      2. Creating an ActionScript class
      3. Creating an ActionScript interface
    6. About library projects
      1. Configuring libraries for your applications
      2. Creating Flex library projects
      3. Adding components to the library project
      4. Selecting library project elements to include in the SWC file
      5. Building library projects
      6. Using SWC files in your projects
  5. Chapter 5: Navigating and Customizing the Flex Builder Workbench
    1. Working with perspectives
      1. Opening and switching perspectives
      2. Setting the default perspective
      3. Opening perspectives in a new window
      4. Customizing a perspective
      5. Deleting a customized perspective
      6. Resetting perspectives
    2. Working with editors and views
      1. Opening views
      2. Moving and docking views
      3. Rearranging tabbed views
      4. Switching between views
      5. Creating and working with fast views
      6. Filtering the Tasks and Problems views
      7. Creating working sets
      8. Opening files for editing
      9. Associating editors with file types
      10. Editing files outside the workbench
      11. Tiling editors
      12. Maximizing a view or editor
    3. Switching the workspace
    4. Customizing the workbench
      1. Rearranging the main toolbar
      2. Changing keyboard shortcuts
      3. Changing fonts and colors
      4. Changing fonts and colors
      5. Changing colors
      6. Controlling single- and double-click behavior
    5. Searching in the workbench
      1. Searching for files
      2. Searching for references and declarations
      3. Using the Search view
    6. Working in the editor’s Source and Design modes
    7. Accessing keyboard shortcuts
    8. Setting workbench preferences
  6. Chapter 6: Building a Flex User Interface
    1. About the structure of Flex user interfaces
    2. Adding and changing components
      1. Add components in MXML Design mode
      2. Add components in complex layouts
      3. Add components by writing code
      4. Adding Flash components (SWC files)
    3. Working with components visually
      1. Using the MXML editor in Design mode
      2. Selecting multiple components in an MXML file
      3. Deselecting multiple components
      4. Positioning components
      5. Sizing components
      6. Using snapping to position components
      7. Aligning components
      8. Nudging components
      9. Setting component properties
      10. Showing surrounding containers
      11. Inspecting the structure of your MXML
      12. Hiding container borders
      13. Copying components to other MXML files
      14. Deleting components
    4. Applying styles and skins
      1. Using the CSS editor in Design mode
        1. Default values
        2. Additional options in the CSS editor
      2. Importing Skin Artwork
      3. Refreshing Design mode to render properly
    5. Laying out your user interface
      1. About constraint-based layouts
      2. Row and column constraints
      3. Inserting and positioning components in the layout
      4. Setting layout constraints for components
    6. Adding navigator containers
      1. Creating layouts in navigator containers
      2. Letting users select a view in a ViewStack container
    7. Adding data provider controls
    8. Adding charting components
  7. Chapter 7: Adding View States and Transitions
    1. About view states and transitions
    2. Creating a view state
    3. Creating a state based on an existing state
    4. Setting a non-base state as the starting state
    5. Setting the initial state of a component
    6. Switching states at run time
    7. Modifying the appearance of existing states
    8. Deleting a view state
    9. Creating a transition
  8. Chapter 8: Adding Interactivity with Behaviors
    1. About Flex behaviors
    2. Creating a behavior for a component
  9. Chapter 9: Code Editing in Flex Builder
    1. About code editing in Flex Builder
    2. About Flex Builder content assistance
      1. About Content Assist
      2. Using Content Assist
      3. Getting help while writing code
    3. Navigating and organizing code
      1. Setting, folding, and unfolding code blocks
      2. Using the Outline view to navigate and inspect code
      3. Using Quick Outline view in the editor
      4. Opening code definitions
      5. Browsing and opening class types
      6. Showing line numbers
    4. Formatting and editing code
      1. Organizing import statements
      2. Adding comments and comment blocks
      3. Manually indenting code blocks
      4. Finding and replacing text in the editor
    5. Finding references and refactoring code
    6. About markers
      1. Navigating markers
      2. Adding tasks
      3. Completing and deleting tasks
      4. Adding and deleting bookmarks
    7. About syntax error checking
      1. Apply syntax coloring preferences
      2. Using the Problems view
    8. Code editing keyboard shortcuts
  10. Chapter 10: Building Projects
    1. Understanding how projects are built and exported
    2. Build basics
    3. Customizing project builds
      1. Enabling and disabling automatic builds
      2. Setting up a project output folder
      3. Modifying a project build path
      4. Creating a path variable
    4. Export Release Build
      1. Export Adobe AIR application installer
      2. Debug version
    5. Advanced build options
      1. Building projects manually
      2. Saving project resources automatically
      3. Performing a clean build
      4. Changing the project build order
      5. Customizing builds with Apache Ant
      6. Using multiple SDKs in Flex Builder
        1. Using multiple SDKs in a server-based project
    6. Publishing source code
      1. Adding the view source menu to ActionScript projects
  11. Chapter 11: Running and Debugging Applications
    1. About running and debugging applications
    2. Running your applications
    3. Managing launch configurations
      1. Creating or editing a launch configuration
      2. Running the application SWF file in the stand-alone Flash Player
      3. Changing the default web browser
    4. Debugging your applications
      1. Starting a debugging session
      2. Adding and removing breakpoints
      3. Managing breakpoints in the Breakpoints view
      4. Managing the debugging session in the Debug view
      5. Using the Console view
      6. Managing variables in the Variables view
      7. Using the Expressions view
  12. Chapter 12: Creating Modules
    1. Creating modules in Flex Builder
      1. Compiling modules in Flex Builder
      2. Using multiple projects for modules
      3. Creating projects for modules
      4. Compiling projects for modules
    2. Adding modules to your project
    3. Optimizing modules in Flex Builder
    4. Debugging modules in Flex Builder
  13. Chapter 13: Profiling Flex applications
    1. About profiling
      1. About types of profiling
      2. Additional resources
    2. How the Flex profiler works
      1. About the profiling APIs
      2. About internal player actions
    3. Using the profiler
      1. Starting, stopping, and resuming the profiler
      2. About the profiler buttons
      3. Saving and loading profiling data
      4. Setting profiler preferences
      5. Profiling external applications
    4. About the profiler views
      1. Viewing information in the Live Objects view
      2. Using the Memory Snapshot view
      3. Using the Object References view
      4. Using the Allocation Trace view
      5. Using the Object Statistics view
      6. Using the Performance Profile view
      7. Identifying method performance characteristics
      8. Using the Loitering Objects view
      9. Using the Memory Usage graph
    5. About garbage collection
    6. Identifying problem areas
      1. Locating memory leaks
      2. Analyzing execution times
      3. Locating excessive object allocation
    7. About profiler filters
  14. Chapter 14: Working with Data in Flex Builder
    1. About working with data in Flex Builder
      1. Data-driven controls and containers
      2. Data providers and collections
      3. Remote data access
      4. Data binding
      5. Data models
      6. Data validation
      7. Data formatting
    2. Automatically generating database applications
      1. Generating a PHP database application
        1. Directory structure and deployment considerations for PHP
      2. Generating a J2EE database application
        1. Directory structure and deployment considerations for J2EE
      3. Generating an ASP .NET database application
        1. Directory structure and deployment considerations for ASP .NET
      4. Creating a database connection profile
    3. Automatically generating web service proxies
      1. Managing generated web service code
      2. Creating an application that uses the generated proxy code (1/3)
      3. Creating an application that uses the generated proxy code (2/3)
      4. Creating an application that uses the generated proxy code (3/3)
        1. Calling a service with MXML
        2. Calling a service with ActionScript
        3. Working with special types
        4. Adding a header to an operation call and getting the header from an operation result
        5. Handling the result of an operation call
    4. Automatically generating Flex Ajax Bridge code
    5. Managing Flash Player security
      1. Using cross-domain policy files
      2. Setting up a proxy to access remote data
      3. Setting up Flex Builder to use a proxy for accessing remote data
  15. Chapter 15: Flex Builder User Interface Reference
    1. Setting project properties
      1. Project text encoding properties
      2. Project compiler properties
      3. Run-time web browser properties
      4. Setting project application file properties
      5. Flex and ActionScript project build path properties
      6. Flex library project build path properties
      7. Flex server properties
      8. Project builder properties
      9. Project references
    2. Using Flex Builder views
      1. Components view
        1. Custom category
        2. Controls category
        3. Layout category
        4. Navigators category
        5. Charts category
      2. Flex Properties view
      3. Flex Navigator view
      4. Outline view
      5. States view
        1. New State dialog box
        2. Edit State Properties dialog box
    3. Creating project resources
      1. Setting New ActionScript Class dialog box options
      2. Setting New ActionScript Interface dialog box options
      3. Setting the New MXML Component dialog box options
      4. Create Chart dialog box
      5. Setting editor preferences
      6. Setting MXML editor preferences
      7. Setting ActionScript editor preferences
      8. Setting MXML Code Assist preferences
      9. Setting running and debugging preferences
      10. Setting Console view preferences
      11. Setting Run/Debug preferences
      12. Setting Flex debugging preferences
  16. Chapter 16: Creating Custom MXML Components
    1. About custom components
    2. Creating MXML components visually
    3. Designing components visually
    4. Editing and distributing custom MXML components
      1. Distributing custom components

Product information

  • Title: ADOBE® FLEX® BUILDER™ 3: USING ADOBE FLEX BUILDER 3
  • Author(s): Adobe Systems
  • Release date: February 2008
  • Publisher(s): Adobe Systems
  • ISBN: 00120090002SI