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3
Creating a Flash UI for Plug-ins
The Adobe Dialog Manager (ADM) technology, which Adobe provided in previous releases to help third
parties build UI components, is deprecated in this release. Its use is still supported in CS5, but the
functionality will be wholly removed in the next version of the products. You are free to use any UI
framework that suits your needs, but a UI solution based on Flash and Flex components is a recommended
alternative. This chapter will help you get started.
Creative Suite extensions
When you use ADM as the UI framework, the code for the user interface is typically contained in the single
C++ plug-in together with the program logic. To use a Flash UI, separate out the program logic into a C++
plug-in, and put the user-interface code into an Adobe Creative Suite extension. This is a set of files,
delivered as a compiled Flash (SWF) file, that extends the capabilities of one or more Adobe Creative Suite
applications. Developers can use extensions to add services and to integrate new features across the
applications in the suite.
The ActionScript and Flash-based extensions that you can create with Adobe Creative Suite SDK can
provide both the UI and program logic to extend any CS5 application in a unified way. Such exensions can
be shared across applications, accessing the host application's scripting interface in order to interact with
each specific application in an appropriate way.
However, if you are using an extension only to provide a UI for an Illustrator C++ plug-in, you typically put
the program logic in the C++ plug-in, where you can use Illustrator's native C++ API rather than the
scripting interface.
For C++ plug-in development, it is recommended that you use Visual Studio on Windows and Xcode
on Mac. For details, see Getting Started with Adobe Illustrator CS5 Development.
For Flash extension development, use the Creative Suite Extension Builder, which is part of the Adobe
Creative Suite SDK. The SDK provides complete documentation for installing and using the CS SDK.
This chapter provides very general guidelines for how a C++ plug-in and Flash extension interact; each
plug-in has different considerations and requirements. For additional sample code that illustrates how to
modify your C++ plug-in to use the PlugPlug API, and how to write a Flash extension that provides a UI for
a C++ plug-in, see the samples that are provided with the Illustrator SDK
About the Adobe Creative Suite SDK
Adobe Creative Suite extensions make use of Adobe Flex framework. Flex is an open source framework for
building highly interactive, expressive web applications that deploy on all major browsers, desktops, and
operating systems in a consistent manner. Flex provides a modern, standards-based language and
programming model that supports common design patterns. MXML, a declarative XML-based language, is
used to describe UI layout and behaviors, and ActionScript® 3, a powerful object-oriented programming
/samplecode/FreeGrid/
/samplecode/FreeGridUI/
/samplecode/StrokerFilter/
/samplecode/StrokeFilterUI/
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