MACROMEDIA FLEX-GETTING STARTED WITH FLEX Getting Started page 10

Applications running in Flash Player behave like desktop applications, instead of a series of linked
pages. Flash Player manages the client interface as a single, uninterrupted flow and does not
require a page load from the server when the client moves from one section of the application
to another.
Flex offers the following additional benefits to your web applications:
Standards-based architecture
Flex scripting language, to existing standards. MXML is XML-compliant, implements styles
based on the Cascading Style Sheets, level 1(CSS1) specification, and implements an event model
based on a subset of the W3C DOM Level 3 Events specification. ActionScript is an
ECMAScript-based language that provides support for object-oriented development. The Flex
server executes on standard J2EE platforms or servlet containers.
Reduction in server load and network bandwidth
application runs in Flash Player, which means that no application server processing resources are
spent on data formatting. By off loading presentation logic to the client, and eliminating the need
for frequent page refreshes, Flex applications minimize network traffic and server load.
Common deployment environment
Flash Player, which is platform-independent, so customers do not need to install custom client
software. Also, Flash Player runs consistently in all browsers and platforms, so you do not have to
worry about inconsistent behavior in different client environments.
Developing applications for Macromedia Flash Player
The target of a Flex application is Flash Player. Flex developers do not need any Flash authoring
background. Rather, a typical Flex developer will have more experience developing applications
using a server-based model. Flex lets you use a familiar programming model to develop the client
tier and presentation tier.
Flex supports two versions of Flash Player. Flex application users install the standard Flash Player
to run Flex applications. Flex also supports the debug version of Flash Player, called Flash Debug
Player. Flex application developers use Flash Debug Player during the development process. Flash
Debug Player supports important features for developers, including the following:
Error reporting
Player can also capture the output of the
information, see Chapter 36, "Debugging Flex Applications," in Developing Flex Applications.
ActionScript profiling
Profiler records the time that Flash Player takes to perform tasks in ActionScript. For more
information, see Chapter 37, "Profiling ActionScript," in Developing Flex Applications.
Debugging support
information, see Chapter 36, "Debugging Flex Applications," in Developing Flex Applications.
10 Chapter 1: Introducing Flex
Macromedia designed Flex, ActionScript, and MXML, the
Flex applications deploy on a J2EE server and execute on
Lets you direct runtime error and warning messages to a log file. Flash Debug
Helps to identify performance bottlenecks in your applications. The
Lets you debug ActionScript files used by your Flex applications. For more
Some or all of the presentation tier of a Flex
function and write it to the log file. For more
trace()