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.