Flex 4 Features

Adobe recently released beta version of Flex4  with new features and developer friendly tools.  Wich   enables fast and automated features . Some of  the new features add-on are.

Integrated with Adobe Catalyst

The Flex IDE is integrated with the Adobe Catalyst. witch is formally known as Adobe Thermo.  Which inter operates with adobe products such as Photoshop, CS,Illustrator, etc.. and generates the corresponding mxml code.

The Graphic element generated in Adobe Creative Suite can directly be used in Flex IDE using the Catalyst. Supports to draw graphic objects , It’s behavior with respect to states and events  and import then into IDE . With this design, art and grahic oriented code need not to be type very much.

Text Layout Framework

It is open source framework for rich text rendering.  It has capable of rendering text in columns, Text flow control, support for multi languages including some  Indian languages , Vertical text flow, Right to Left text flow, Text wrapping around image and inserting image in textcontrol, etc.. It also support text to export to xml, html and plain text formats and importing too. TLF can also be used in Flex 3.3 and above , AIR 1.5 . know more about it

Support for FXG

FXG is a XML based graphics interchange format. FXG contains hight level graphics primitives enables to create, combine, group, modify, transform basic vector and bitmap graphics.One of the major benefits of FXG is that it will make it much easier to build visual tooling around working with and designing Flex applications (such as Thermo and all of the Adobe CS tools).

Designers can create graphics using tools such as Adobe Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4 and Fireworks CS4 and export them into the FXG format. You can use tools such as Flash Builder with the FXG file to develop rich Internet applications. These applications run in a web browser using the Flash Player or on the desktop as an AIR application.

Component Architecture:

In flex4 new components are  introduced known as ‘Spark Components’ .The ‘Spark’ components are implemented over the ‘Halo’ components. In Flex 3 component architecture is totaly besed on ‘Halo Components’, But  Flex 4 allows to use both Spark and Halo components. In addition FXG componets are supported the xml assembly  prefix are used to differentiate the components kind.

like, ‘mx’  for Halo, ‘s’ for Spark and ‘fxg’ for  FXG coponents.

Halo (<mx:Button>)

Spark (<s:Button>)

Fxg (<fxg:component>)

MXML 2009 Languages

The MXML 2006 wich is used in Flex3 was extended to  support for spark and FXG components . The syntaxt and XML assembly were changed in MXML 2009. Were you should specify all declarations in on seperate block

such as <fx:declaration> . All nonvisual components should be declared in  <fx:declarations></fx:declarations>, like HTTPService, WebServices, URLRequest, URLLoader, XML, Model, ArrayColletion, ect

Flex 4 Language changes

• Halo – xmlns:mx=”library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo”

Included in previous releases of Flex

• Spark – xmlns:s=”library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark”>

New architecture for skinning and have other advantages/components

• Flash XML Graphics – for workflow hand off between Flash

Catalyst and Flash Builder 4

• xmlns:fx=http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009

Support for Flash Catalyst (Thermo) Exports

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