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September 20, 2008
Flex 4: Two-way Bindings and Other Improvements
Reading through the subversion commits, I've seen a number of interesting changes for Flex 4.
Carol Frampton added inline support for two-way binding. Using the syntax of "@{expr}", you can now more simply support two-way binding.
Paul Reilly has submitted a number of compiler performance improvements, including one which results in significant improvements in Flex Builder.
Gaurav Jain added support for ASDoc comments in MXML files. "For adding comments at the class level or to properties defined inside mxml use the syntax <!--- comment (notice 3 dashes at the start) -->"
September 7, 2008
Flex Builder Plug-in for Cairngorm, Code Metrics, and More
I've been playing with the Flex Builder plug-in for enterprise development, a new add-on to Flex Builder which has some very useful features for the average developer. I'll share below the good and bad of what I've seen.
The good:
There's a huge number of features, a lot of things that I want to use right away:
Enhanced AS3, MXML and Cairngorm wizards
Cairngorm Explorer
Flex Code Metrics Explorer
FlexUnit test and test suite generators
Flex Package Explorer
It's been stable for me. That's always a plus for a beta that's being used in your main work environment.
The bad:
My main gripe, and the only reason I won't be using the plug-in right now, is that it only picks up the details of the main source folder. In the projects that I work on, most of the source files are in the "additional source folders". The plug-in does not use these source folders to find Cairngorm commands, compute code metrics, etc.
It'd be very helpful to allow the copying of the text in the code metrics explorer.
The unknown:
How many of these features are already planned for the next version of Flex Builder? It's not great for the plug-in, but there's a lot of things in here that I just expect Flex Builder to get to eventually. On the other hand, it does feel to me like there's a lot of niche enterprise-y features to do to keep the plug-in going.
There's a lot of new directions that the product can go in, a million feature that could be added. I wonder what will happen next? I hope that the product can first make sure the current pieces are solid and start selling the plug-in, as I think it'd be a great addition to the Flex ecosystem.
Update on Using Flex SWCs within Flash CS3
I wanted to give an update on Using Flex SWCs within Flash CS3?, the post I wrote last week about using framework-less Flex 3 SWCs within Flash CS3. The coworker diving into the problem, Crystal West, has solved the issue, and you'll be able to use the SWC yourself (in time) to build advertising products for Brightcove.
So what had to change in order to use the SWC in Flash Authoring?
1. In the compiler arguments, set compute-digest to false.
2. In the compiler arguments, use include-namespaces and namespace to include the classes. Use this instead of include-classes.
3. Change main classes that extend Sprite to extend MovieClip.
4. In the compiler arguments, add flex.swc to external-library-path.
The first three changes are ones that you can find on other blogs or in the helpful comments to the first post. The last one needs a bit more explanation.
I assumed we weren't using any Flex classes in the SWC for Flash Authoring, but the Flex classes that are being included aren't referenced directly. It's all classes that come in from Embed statements, which generate code that use Flex classes. Rather than removing the Embeds or creating class-level Embeds, we used the external-library-path to remove the references. Simply pointing to flex.swc within the Flex SDK will do the trick.
