Chapter 1: Introducing Flex; About Flex - MACROMEDIA FLEX-GETTING STARTED WITH FLEX Getting Started

CHAPTER 1
Introducing Flex
This chapter introduces you to the Macromedia Flex presentation server, a development and
runtime environment that lets you create rich interfaces for your web applications. Macromedia
Flex defines a standards-based programming methodology for building the presentation tier of
rich Internet applications. Rich Internet applications combine the responsiveness and richness of
desktop software with the broad reach of web applications to deliver a more effective user
experience.
This chapter describes the characteristics of a typical Flex application, provides an overview of the
Flex feature set, and defines the development process that you use to create Flex applications.
Contents

About Flex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Developing applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Flex programming model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Features of Flex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Where to next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
About Flex
Flex defines a development and runtime environment that lets developers familiar with server-
side technologies build rich front ends for applications that take advantage of Macromedia Flash
Player. While executing in Flash Player, your application can interact with server-side
functionality, such as databases, web services, Java objects, and other server-side services.
Flex brings the power of Flash to developers who are familiar with traditional programming
languages and server-side development environments. In Flex, you use a standards-based
programming model to develop an application, describe the user interface, configure user-
interface controls, and define data bindings.
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