0,
both output to a SWF format, and both use Flash Player 9 to display their content.
But they are very different in what they are good at. Flash started life as an animation
program and developed more features as time went on, but animation is still one of
its strongest points, and is more in line with what Adobe is intending it for in their
modern suite of tools. Flex by contrast is really good at developing applications and
the things that are associated with it??”charting, handling data, and such. Sure, it can
do animation, but the kinds of animation that Flex focuses on are things such as transitions
that take place as menus expand, or items such as images scaling to different
sizes in different states. We will be looking more closely at these effects and transitions
when we build our photo gallery in Chapter 8.
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FLEX BUILDER AND FLASH
Chapter 6
There are three major ways to integrate Flash and Flex. The first is to use Flash to create skins and
component animations. The second is to bring in complex timeline animations. And the third is to
bring in Flash MovieClips that can be controlled in Flex. We will be looking at all three in this chapter.
Setting up to integrate Flash and Flex
Before we begin, we need to install two extensions that help integrate Flash and Flex. The first is the
Flex Skin Design Extension for Flash. This extension simplifies the process for making Flex component
skins in Flash. Extensions are also available for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks.
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