Flash CS3 vs. Flex Builder 2

Question

Here's the $64,000 question: should we be developing in Flash
CS3 or should we shift over to Flex Builder 2? I maintain that AS
3.0 is a pain in the proverbial, but I've been researching and
finding as much help as possible online about it, and I've found
that by and large people are using Flex Builder 2 as the basis of
tutorials about AS 3.0. Does anyone have an official slant on this
question? Should we abandon Flash for Flex? Will it help? Will it
mitigate the difficulties non-programmers are experiencing with AS
3.0 - or as I call it simply ***? Would I be getting more responses
to my *** questions if I post them over in the *** forum under Flex
Builder?
Any thoughts on this matter would be most welcome, thank
you.

Answer 1

Beatie3,
>> Help please.
Sorry about that ... some days are crazier than others. :-/
[From an earlier reply ...]
> Thank you very much, that's exactly the sort of answer I
> needed. Hmmm, cheque's in the mail. ;)
Heh, good on ya! :)
> I'm definitely a 'deseloper' and will stick with Flash.
I wish
> I had the luxury of only dipping into AS3.
I don't know that I'd call it a luxury, really. Work is
work. ;) As
you might imagine, though, Flex Builder 2 provides a number
of scripting
improvements over the Actions panel (there's really no
comparison; if you've
tried them both, the Actions panel barely feels useful) and
the Flex
framework offers significantly more UI Components. Ideally,
if the pocket
book allows it, using both applications is the killer setup.
> My problem is that I built a little program that draws
scale bars
> on uploaded images that can then be printed. It did
everything
> it needed to, but in AS2.0 you can't control the quality
of the
> imported jpgs.
When you say imported, you mean dynamically loaded (loaded
at runtime),
right? Otherwise, I'm confused. The Flash IDE itself allows
you to
determine the quality of imported JPGs. In ActionScript 3.0
... are you
talking about the Stage.quality property?
> I'm experimenting with Sprites and I have something
appearing
> as the line is drawn but I can't crack the new way to
express
> coordinates.
Not sure what might be tripping you up, actually. The
coordinate grid
is the same. Horizontally, higher numbers move toward the
right;
vertically, higher numbers move toward the bottom. That's the
same as it's
been.
> I just want a blue hair line with a nice green dot at
each end
> that can be seen while the line is drawn. Once the
mouseUp
> happens the drawing guide should disappear and the black
> line appear.
Having heard what you're after, I just started a quick
experiment from
scratch. Here's my version, below. Note: I've made no effort
to optimize
my code. This is just a first draft to achieve a blue line
segment with
green dots on each end that becomes a black line segment when
the mouse
lifts.
var startX:Number;
var startY:Number;
var canvas:Sprite = new Sprite();
addChild(canvas);
canvas.stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,
mouseDownHandler);
canvas.stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,
mouseUpHandler);
function mouseDownHandler(evt:MouseEvent):void {
startX = mouseX;
startY = mouseY;
var dot:Sprite = new Sprite();
dot.name = "dotStart";
dot.graphics.beginFill(0x00FF00);
dot.graphics.drawCircle(mouseX, mouseY, 5);
dot.graphics.endFill();
canvas.addChild(dot);
dot = new Sprite();
dot.name = "dotEnd";
dot.graphics.beginFill(0x00FF00);
dot.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 5);
dot.graphics.endFill();
canvas.addChild(dot);
canvas.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,
enterFrameHandler);
function enterFrameHandler(evt:Event):void {
var dot:DisplayObject = canvas.getChildByName("dotEnd");
dot.x = mouseX;
dot.y = mouseY;
canvas.graphics.clear();
canvas.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0x0000FF);
canvas.graphics.moveTo(startX, startY);
canvas.graphics.lineTo(mouseX, mouseY);
function mouseUpHandler(evt:MouseEvent):void {
canvas.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,
enterFrameHandler);
canvas.removeChild(canvas.getChildByName("dotStart"));
canvas.removeChild(canvas.getChildByName("dotEnd"));
canvas.graphics.clear();
canvas.graphics.lineStyle(2, 0x000000);
canvas.graphics.moveTo(startX, startY);
canvas.graphics.lineTo(mouseX, mouseY);
There's a lot of repeated code there, and this isn't how I'd
leave the
above in an actual project, but by spilling out a rough cut
like this, I'm
hoping it gives you something to work with -- showing the
mechanics of how
this might be done.
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."