Getting Started with Flash Remoting for ColdFusion MX
You may be thinking that Flash is only an animation tool. While that used to be the primary use for Flash, with the launch of Flash MX, Flash is now a full-blown application development platform. Macromedia’s vision for Flash MX is as the front end (GUI) for RIAs. RIAs are made up of several components:
- Flash 6 player
The Flash 6 player provides the container in which a Flash movie runs. It can run as a web browser plug-in or as a standalone player. One of the great things about the Flash 6 player is the relative ubiquity it enjoys.[1]
- Flash movie
A Flash movie runs inside the Flash player. It contains user interface controls and ActionScript code for controlling both the behaviors in the movie and any interactivity with ColdFusion via Flash Remoting. Flash movies are developed in the Flash MX authoring tool, compiled, and then deployed as .swf files.
- ActionScript
ActionScript is the programming language used by Flash. ActionScript looks a lot like JavaScript. In fact, if you already know JavaScript, you should have no trouble picking up ActionScript. Within a Flash movie, ActionScript is used to control virtually all aspects of interactivity between the movie and ColdFusion and within the movie itself. There’s just too much to ActionScript to even begin to cover it in this chapter. If you want an excellent reference, I recommend ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide by Colin Mook (O’Reilly). It really is considered ...
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