
60 Building a Flex Application
One advantage of having predefined layout rules is that your users will soon grow accustomed
to them. That is, by standardizing the rules of user interaction, your users will not have to
think about how to navigate the application, but can instead concentrate on the content that
the application offers.
Another advantage is that you do not have to spend time defining navigation and layout rules
as part of the design process. Instead, you can concentrate on the information that you want
to deliver and the options that you want to provide for your users, and not worry about
implementing all the details of user action and application response. In this way, Flex provides
the structure that lets you quickly and easily develop an application with a rich set of features
and interactions.
For more information on the Flex layout rules, see Chapter 8, “Sizing and Positioning
Components,” in Flex 2 Developer’s Guide.
Using Flex Builder to lay out your application
You can use Flex Builder to build the user interface of a Flex application. You use Flex Builder
to develop Flex and ActionScript applications by using visual coding and design tools. You
can also write MXML, ActionScript, and CSS code in an editor that helps streamline your
development work by providing code hinting and other code assistance features.
In the editor, you can switch into design mode and develop your applications visually,
working with containers and components on the design canvas, using constraints to lay out
your components, and view states to handle run-time user-interface transformations. You
then build your projects by using a customizable compiler and debug the projects with
integrated debugging tools.
For more information, see Chapter 5, “Building a Flex User Interface,” in Using Flex Builder 2.
Defining a user interface in MXML
Your application can consist of one or more MXML files. Using multiple MXML files
promotes code reuse, simplifies the process of building a complex application, and makes it
easier for more than one developer to contribute to a project.
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