Adobe Flash Builder

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This page is part of the Flex tutorials.

Introduction

Adobe Flex Builder is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for developing flex/actionscript/flash applications.

See also: MXML (for a short intro to MXML, the layout language), Actionscript 3 (entry point for pure AS tutorials) and Flash ActionScript 3 overview (the Flash AS equivalent).

The various freely available online documentation for Flex Builder is very good (much better than for

Using Flex Builder

Step 1 - Create a new Project.

Like most IDEs you can't just edit a little file, but you need to define a new project: File->New; Flex project.

• We called our project "testing"

Step 2 alternative A - Add some *.mxml code.

Just copy and paste some code. E.g. get some code from the Flex datagrid component tutorial.

You should see something like this:

Adobe Flex Builder 3 - Some mxml code

Step 2 alternative B - Drag a component to the stage

Click on the Design tag and drag the component to the stage You should see something like this:

Adobe Flex Builder 3 - Design view

Step 3 - Run / Compile

Click on the green arrow or use the "run" menu

Links

Documentation

Flex Builder

• Using Adobe Flex Builder 3 (HTML LiveDocs) - PDF version (233 pages).

General

• See the Flash and AS3 links - documentation for some links
• Explore Adobe's Flex DevNet
• Adobe Flex resources

Software

Flex Builder

• You can testdrive it for 30 days (download)
• Educators and students can get a serial number for free use by filling in a form

Alternatives

• Flashdevelop. Free and open source tool that provides syntax support and an interface with the Flex compilers.