Programming Flex 3

Building AIR Applications

Building desktop applications usually is not a simple task. Building desktop applications with elegant user interfaces, animated transitions, and all that Flex provides is typically even more challenging. Therefore, in a relative way building AIR applications is extraordinarily simple. There are a few minor differences between building AIR applications and building web applications using Flex. The workflow for building AIR applications using Flex is as follows:

1. Create a new Flex project. If you are using the SDK, there is nothing different about how you configure a Flex AIR project versus a Flex web project. If you are using Flex Builder, you should select the “Desktop application” option from the “Application type” section of the first screen of the New Flex Project Wizard.

2. Write a Flex application using MXML and ActionScript just as you would for a web application. However, instead of using Application as the root tag for the application MXML document you must use the WindowedApplication tag. Also, because AIR allows for features beyond what web applications allow, you can also use the AIR-specific APIs and components.

3. In addition to the normal application files (MXML, ActionScript, embedded assets, CSS files, etc.), you also need to define a descriptor file. A descriptor file is an XML file that contains information about the application, such as the names of files to include in the application, the name of the application, and various other pieces of information, ...