I did a simple bootstrap similar to Borek (see below). I would love to get rid of the mxml file, but if I don't have it, I don't get any of the standard themes that come with Flex (haloclassic.swc, etc). Does anybody know how to do what Theo suggests and still have the standard themes applied?
Here's my simplified bootstrapping method:
main.mxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom:ApplicationClass xmlns:custom="components.*"/>
ApplicationClass.as
package components {
import mx.core.Application;
import mx.events.FlexEvent;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import mx.controls.Alert;
import mx.controls.Button;
public class ApplicationClass extends Application {
public function ApplicationClass () {
addEventListener (FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE, handleComplete);
}
private function handleComplete( event : FlexEvent ) : void {
var button : Button = new Button();
button.label = "My favorite button";
button.styleName="halo"
button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick);
addChild( button );
}
private function handleClick(e:MouseEvent):void {
Alert.show("You clicked on the button!", "Clickity");
}
}
}
Here are the necessary updates to use it with Flex 4:
main.mxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<local:MyApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" xmlns:local="components.*" />
MyApplication.as
package components {
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import mx.controls.Alert;
import mx.events.FlexEvent;
import spark.components.Application;
import spark.components.Button;
public class MyApplication extends Application {
public function MyApplication() {
addEventListener(FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE, creationHandler);
}
private function creationHandler(e:FlexEvent):void {
var button : Button = new Button();
button.label = "My favorite button";
button.styleName="halo"
button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick);
addElement( button );
}
private function handleClick(e:MouseEvent):void {
Alert.show("You clicked it!", "Clickity!");
}
}
}
- How productive it is to program in Flex compared to the .Net + Silverlight?
Way more productive than Silverlight as it has a much richer and capable control library. Silverlight is rapidly gaining ground here though. I think by the time SL 4 comes out they will reach feature parity, maybe even SL 3.
- Any technical advantages over other frameworks?
If you can create it in Photoshop, you can pretty much do it in Flex with the help of the Flash drawing API. If you want to build very interesting data visualizations (tree/node diagrams, such as an org chart) you can do this Flex without a ton of work.
There is no server-side component to ActionScript so you need to find a way to pass data between Flex and your backend, be it Java, .NET, PHP, etc. There are libraries out there to AMF remoting with just about any backend which makes it easy. But as far as the objects you pass between the two, you need to maintain both or use a code generation tool to create AS3 classes from your backend classes.
- Does it have any known scaling issues?
Flex is simply a presentation technology so this question doesn't really apply.
- What kind of web servers can it be hosted on?
Again, only a presentation technology. It compiles out to a SWF file that is loaded by the browser over HTTP and then executes inside of the Flash Player plugin.
Best Answer
After using, in turn, all three of frameworks you listed, I can easily conclude that Mate is by far the superior framework. Of course, that's only my opinion and determining what makes a framework superior differs depending on your requirements.
To me, Mate's most appealing feature is how well it separates the different tiers of your application. After becoming familiar with it, I could never go back to using a framework that makes extensive use of global-state "Singletons" (Cairngorm, PureMVC).
However, Mate can probably be a bit difficult getting started with as the documentation is still a bit lacking and outdated, making it hard to know where to find the newest information. Some of the best practices and approaches that have been ironed out are to be found in the Mate forums, requiring some digging through posts. One of the most active users on that forum, Theo, has written a very good summary on the benefits of Mate in the following post:
Flex MVC Frameworks