Programming Flex 3

Utilizing Best Practices

There are lots of ways build Flex applications. This shouldn’t surprise you; there are lots of ways to do most things in life, and building Flex applications is no different. Furthermore, it’s impossible to say there is exactly one right way to build Flex applications, just as it is impossible to say there is just one right way to do anything else. However, you can employ certain strategies that increase your likelihood of success when building Flex applications. We call these best practices, and in the following sections we’ll go into a bit more detail regarding a few of the best practices we consider most important. We strongly encourage you to try these out for yourself. Give them a fair chance; you may later discard some of them, but chances are that more than a few will prove to help you and your teams in the long run.

Organizing Files

How you organize project files can have a tremendous impact of the success of a project. File organization might seem unimportant, but don’t underrate how influential this factor can be. Organizing files well ensures that not only is it easier to find the files and easier for teams to work together, but also you avoid potential naming conflicts and can facilitate source code versioning (see Versioning” later in this chapter).

If you use Flex Builder to create Flex projects, you have probably already noticed that Flex Builder provides a degree of organization. Primarily, Flex Builder distinguishes between where it stores ...