Explore the Premium Content

Using navigation controls in Flex Builder 2

Flex 2 comes with a set of navigation controls that are easy to include in your applications. The navigation controls are useful because they will automatically generate a navigation system based on other elements in your application.

Flex 2 tips and best practices

Welcome to the last in this series of articles about the Flex 2 framework. If you've been reading the previous articles, you'll have learned about building Flex applications using Flex Builder. We've covered some basics such as styling components as well as more advanced topics like consuming external data and building custom ActionScript classes.

Debugging applications in Flex Builder 2

The Flex framework is a great approach for building Web applications that run in SWF files. It comes with a set of built-in components that you can extend and use for a variety of purposes. However, what do you do when you can't get your application to work properly? What do those warnings and error messages actually mean and how can you figure out what's causing them? That's the topic for this article – the various debugging tools that are available to you in Flex Builder 2.

Creating an XML application using Flex Builder – part 3

Welcome to the final part of the three part case study on building a Flex 2 application. In part 1, we started to build our real estate listings application. We created the interface for the application and the custom class that loaded the external XML document. In part 2, we populated the interface to show a list of all properties from the XML document.

Creating an XML application using Flex Builder – part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the three part case study on building a Flex 2 application. In part 1, we started to build our real estate listings application. We created the interface for the application and the custom class that loaded the external XML document. In part 2, we'll populate the Repeater control in the interface to show a list of all properties from the XML document.

Using Flex for JavaScript-ActionScript communication

In this tutorial, I want to look at how you can create communication between ActionScript in a Flex application and JavaScript in a Web page. The ExternalInterface or External API in ActionScript 3.0 is what makes it all possible!

Creating an XML application using Flex Builder

So far in this series of articles, we've spent a lot of time looking at the different things you can do with Flex 2. We've looked at some of the built-in components you can use to create Flex applications. We've also created custom components and ActionScript classes.

In the next three articles, I want to take you through a case study where you can put together what you've learned so far to create a complete Flex application. We'll use an external XML document to power the application which will show us real estate listings. We'll see a summary of all listings and we'll be able to click to find out more about each listing. The case study will give you good insight into how you might approach building a complete application.

Creating your own Flex components

If you've worked with Flex Builder 2, you'll notice that it includes many different built-in components. There are user interface controls such as ComboBoxes and Buttons, containers such as HBoxes and VBoxes, and navigation controls like the Accordion and TabBar. There is even a range of charting components that you can purchase separately.

Flex 2 and ActionScript 3.0 classes

In the article, Loading an RSS feed into Flex using ActionScript 3.0, I introduced you to ActionScript 3.0 and we worked through an application that displayed the content from an RSS 2 feed. We created a simple interface and configured it using ActionScript in a script block at the top of the page. You learned how to add ActionScript to a Flex application and we explored some of the new features in ActionScript 3.0.

Loading an RSS feed into Flex using ActionScript 3.0

ActionScript 3.0 is the latest version of the ActionScript scripting language which goes with Flex 2. You can only run SWF files containing ActionScript 3.0 in Flash Player 9. ActionScript 3.0 makes some major changes to the language and introduces a number of new features. If you're used writing ActionScript 2.0, you probably won't find the latest version too difficult to master.

Charting with Flex – part 2

In the previous article, I showed you the power of creating charts using the Flex charting components. We created a simple pie chart and added some styling as well as looking at some of the variations that are possible.

In this article, I want to take things one step further. This time, we'll create a column chart and display data that we've loaded from an external XML file. You'll see how to:

• structure an XML file with the chart data
• load the XML content into the application
• set the dataProvider from the loaded content
• add data series from the loaded content
• add a legend to the chart
• change the column and axis colours
• add a line to create a mixed chart type

Charting with Flex – part 1

One of the great features of Flex Builder and the Flex framework is the charting components. These components allow you to create several different types of charts using either tags or ActionScript including line, column, bar, pie and area charts. You can change the chart options and add styling.

In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the general process of creating a chart and we'll create a simple pie chart. You'll learn how to

• add and display data on the chart
• add labels and a title
• add a legend
• change the colours for each slice of pie
• create a doughnut and exploded pie chart