Beginning Flash®, Flex®, and AIR® Development for Mobile Devices

1

An Introduction to Flash, Flex, and AIR

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• An overview of the Adobe Flash platform
• Outlining the key concepts of the ActionScript 3.0 language
• Exploring the Flex framework and MXML components
• A brief introduction to Adobe AIR

In this chapter you'll take a look at each of the core elements of the book: Flash, Flex, and AIR.

First you'll cover a number of the core aspects of Flash and the programming language ActionScript 3.0, which this book uses.

You'll then explore the key features of the Flex framework and MXML components, looking at examples through code snippets.

Lastly, you'll be introduced to features of AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime.

ADOBE FLASH

Adobe's Flash platform consists of several Flash-based runtime clients: Flash Player, Flash Lite, and Adobe AIR. Each run time has its own set of functions and APIs that are specific for that run time.

The Flash platform also encompasses a component framework, Flex. All these elements, the runtime clients and component frameworks, support and utilize the SWF format.

Flash is predominantly used for the web deployment of rich content and applications. It is installed as a web browser plug-in, and can also run content in standalone mode. The Adobe Flash logo is shown in Figure 1-1.

FIGURE 1-1: The Adobe Flash logo

Flash on Mobile Devices

There are currently two ways in which Flash has dedicated ...