LFFS - 9: MXML Continued... And A Sample Application For You To Work With!

The latest installment of the Learning Flex From Scratch series on InsideRIA continues our discussion on MXML. This time, I go a little deeper into the language, and cover rules of syntax as well as the relationship between it and ActionScript. Unique to this one though, is that we included a sample application for people to experiment with. It's a non-working calculator which, in order to get working, requires a little Flex know-how. Adam was kind enough to produce this application as an "assignment" for me, and I thought it might be a good idea to include it in our series. I really feel like I learned a lot from getting it to work, and I hope for the same for others who try. Our next entry will be a discussion of my process of getting the calculator programmed, and will hopefully shed some light for those who may be struggling. See you soon!

An Addition To "Helpful Resources"

I'm compelled to write about a very helpful resource that I've been all over lately. Safari books online has a HUGE collection of material available as a subscription. I tried the free trial and forgot to cancel. This was a very happy accident, since I've recently found tons of helpful information on stuff I'm trying to get a handle on. For example, Alaric Cole's excellent book, Learning Flex 3, has been a great help. I really think the monthly cost of $42.99 for unlimited access to their library is worth it. I know there's plenty of people like me who are jumping head first into a commitment of learning Flex, Flash, or whatever, and having a huge library of material to page through is really a big help. That's all for now...off to study!

Resources for Learning Flex

We've got another installment on InsideRIA, this time it diverges from the usual content and is simply a list of helpful resources that I've run across on my journey into Flex. There's tons of info out there, but it's often difficult keep the helpful stuff organized. I recommend a maintaining a clear starting point from which you can navigate to whatever content you need at the time. As I continue to learn more about being a Flex developer, I'll surely run across more great resources and my list will need to be updated. To keep a handle on this, I've created a del.icio.us account for Learning Flex From Scratch. This way, everyone can compare the resources I've found to their own and possibly come across something useful.

Arrays in Flex

Not long ago, the sixth installment of the Learning Flex From Scratch series on InsideRIA went up, and its subject was arrays. I would have to say that this was the most challenging one so far, but it seems to have been a hit with our fans in Indonesia, Spain, and the Netherlands, as Google Analytics would have us believe. We've dedicated a good amount time to ActionScript 3.0 in the series, covering such areas as Loops, Conditionals, and general object-oriented programming concepts. Soon, we'll have a post on MXML up to round out our coverage of the languages used in Flex, and then we'll move on to discussions of the tools used in creating rich internet applications in Flex.

ActionScript - Conditionals and Loops

Our latest installment of Learning Flex From Scratch on InsideRIA tries to explain the nature of conditional statements and looping blocks of code in ActionScript 3.0. Once again, I turned to my trusty companions for information: Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 3.0, the Adobe live docs, Wikipedia, and of course, Google Talk incessantly pinging my mentor-Adam Flater.

Given that I am learning Flex as I go, and that we are determined to put up a new post each week, it's really important that i have lots of quality information at my disposal at all times. Thankfully, I do. Adam's help is absolutely indispensable, and his patience with my newbie questions deserves special mention.

As far as those resources I've come across on my own, I would say Essential ActionScript 3.0 and the Adobe live docs have been most helpful, at least for these last few posts. One thing I recently found helpful is the ActionScript 3.0 language reference. This is handy for any developer I'm sure, but for someone trying to get a handle on the language it really makes sense of the many sometimes confusing language components. Also, Colin Moock's website has got some really great resources. He's got a lecture series about ActionScript, and his notes are available to check out. It's just an outline with no detail on the included topics, (for details, read Essential ActionScript 3.0) but it really can help to see what the important areas are when you're first learning the language.

That's all for now, I've got to go study up on collections and arrays!

public function learnActionScript (currentKnowledge : String)= "notMuch"

Our latest post on LFFS is called: LFFS-4-ActionScript 3.0, and it's all about writing a class in ActionScript 3.0. It's a little bit longer than the others, and it took a bit more time to complete, but I'm not sure if we could have made it any shorter. The class itself has a bunch of the stuff anyone learning the language needs to know. My hope is that my attempt at explaining the various parts of our example class comes through clearly. A challenge like learning an object-oriented language without any programming experience whatsoever lends itself to explanations of code that may not be the norm. I tried to reiterate points that I thought were important to my learning process, so hopefully those who are in the same situation as I am will be able to learn from our installment!

Cheeri-o

more flex on inside ria

Adam and I have updated the posts on insideRIA a couple of times so far. We've got one up that describes various parts of the Flex framework and covers some important definitions. We've also posted about object-oriented programming just recently. This one covers some general programming concepts as they relate to object orientation. Followers of the series may want to check out our new RIA-flexglossary.net. A beginning programmer will likely find this site useful as it is continually updated with terms as we roll along with the series. See you soon!