Programming Flex 3

Chapter 20. Embedding Flex Applications in a Web Browser

Although it is possible to build Flex applications to deploy on the desktop (see Chapter 22), the vast majority of Flex applications today are deployed on the Web. To deploy a Flex application on the Web you should embed it in an HTML page. Although this may seem like a fantastically simple task (and it can be), it has larger implications. In this chapter, we’ll look at these implications and the options available to you for embedding a Flex application in HTML and how a Flex application can interact with the web browser environment.

Embedding a Flex Application in HTML

By now, you should be aware that Flex applications get compiled to .swf files. When you deploy a Flex application to the Web, you must place the .swf file for the Flex application on the web server. At a minimum, this one file is always required. However, in almost all cases you will need to provide at least one additional file: an HTML file that embeds the .swf. Although it is possible for users to access an .swf file directly in a web browser, such an approach is inadvisable. Keep in mind that when users access a Flex application in a browser, you will still want the browser to display basic information such as a title, information that only an HTML page can provide. Furthermore, by using an HTML page, it is possible to do much more with a Flex application than if the user was accessing the application’s .swf file directly in the browser. For example, using ...