Introduction to Flex 2

... and Everything Else

The previous sections of this Short Cut cover the core topics of Flex 2 development, touching only on Flex's library of over 600 classes. By assaying what topics this Short Cut does not cover in full, I hope to provide you with knowledge of what exists and where to find information on it. Knowing that a facility exists will always save time over re-creating it.

Cursor Management

You can easily swap out the default pointer for any embedded cursor image using the CursorManager class.

Drag-and-drop

You can enable users to drag and drop objects in data components with some simple attributes (dragEnabled, dropEnabled) or create custom drag and drop behavior with the DragManager class.

Validators

The mx.validators package contains classes that can validate values on the fly and provide graphical feedback. You can verify that inputs are valid emails, credit card numbers, zip codes, etc. You can also easily plug in regular expressions to validate arbitrary formats.

Formatters

The mx.formatters package contains classes that can translate data and strings on the fly into "pretty-printed" strings with specific formatting, for phone numbers, dates, currency, etc.

Repeaters

To include multiple copies of a block of MXML, you can surround it with a <mx:Repeater> tag. Only use it to repeat fixed blocks of UI, it's tricky to use with, and not the right tool for, dynamic data.

Charting

Flex Charting http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/charting/ is a separate product offered by Adobe that ...