95-733 Internet Technologies Homework 4 Due: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Getting started with Adobe Flex =============================== There are two ways that one can begin developing Flex applications. You can download and install the free Flex SDK and work from the command line or you can download the 60-day free Trial edition of Flex Builder. These notes will discuss the command line option. Downloading and Installing the Flex SDK ======================================= The Flex SDK can be downloaded from here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3sdk Unzip flex_sdk_3.4.zip to a directory called flex (or any other name). Within flex, you now have a directory called flex_sdk_3.4. Within this directory are many files and sub-directories. The tool that you want to run from the command line is in the bin directory and is called mxmlc (The Macromedia XML Compiler.) So that you can run the compiler from anywhere, set your path variable to point to the bin directory. My path variable contains the string: /Users/mm6/flex/flex_sdk_3.4/bin Compiling using the command line ================================ With a text editor and within some other directory, enter the following mxmlc file: Save this file with the name RSSReader.mxml. From the command line, in the same directory as RSSReader.mxml, enter the following command: mxmlc RSSReader.mxml This should create a file called RSSReader.swf. Run a browser and open the .swf file. It should display a very simple RSS reader in a Flash player. Another interesting example is from the article on getting started with Flex by Jack Herrington, Emily Kimtt Guelich and Shishir Gundavaram. It might be used to compute a training schedule for a runner. This code makes use of ActionScript and may be saved, compiled and executed as described before. Assignment ========== Get both of these programs running and submit a screenshot showing your Flash display. In addition, add comments to the code describing each element of the two MXML programs.