What is Adobe Flex ?

Flex applications are Rich Internet Applications that are built using tools from Adobe.These Flex applications run inside the Flash player, leveraging the existing install base of the Flash player. (Note: Applications built using Flex Builder 2.0 require Flash player ).
Flex is made up largely of two parts. The first is an IDE built on the open source Eclipse platform. That tool is called Flex Builder 2.0, and is available for free download now (in beta format) from the Adobe labs website at http://labs.adobe.com. Final pricing has yet to be announced, but Adobe has committed to making Flex Builder 2.0 available for less than $1,000. As well, a free SDK will be made available for developers who want to build Flex applications. The SDK will include the Flex compiler, allowing developers who code by hand (without the IDE) the ability to create Flex applications for free. For those of us who need a visual IDE, we will still need to purchase the Flex Builder 2.0 tool.
The other part of Adobe Flex is Adobe Flex Enterprise Services. This tool is largely targeted at large enterprises, but will also be made available free to individual developers for limited use. The limitation on the free version of Flex Enterprise Services is that it will be limited in the number of concurrent connections it allows, and in the number of servers it can be installed on.

















Minimum Requirements to learn FLEX

• MXML
• Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
• CSS level 1
• Action Script 3.0 (ECMA-262 Edition 4 specification)

***Action Script 3.0 features a full implementation of ECMA Script for XML (E4X), recently standardized as the ECMA-357 specification

MXML

Every Flex application contains at least one MXML file, known as the main application file. MXML is a markup language, an implementation of XML that was designed specifically for creating Flex applications, and you use it to declaratively define the structure of your application using tags.

Action Script 3.0

We can add dynamic behavior to your applications using Action Script 3.0, which is an implementation of ECMA Script and is similar to JavaScript. You can add Action Script to Flex applications directly in the MXML file as script blocks or you can create separate files of Action Script functions and import them into your MXML files.

Benefits of using Flex

• Enhanced user experience
• A complete environment
• Common deployment environment
• Enterprise-class features
• Eliminate page loads
• Standards-based architecture
• Cross-browser compatibility