http://www.bluestreaktech.com/pr/java3gsm-021207.asp

The paradigm is very different from traditional OOP. It has evolved immensely since it’s inception and continues to do so. The paradigms of Flash are unique to the program. It will take the average user a good amount of time to wrap his/her head around them.

Lots of Flash Junkies use external editors to script their apps as some people are not big fans of the internal editor; although, the Movie Explorer does help to track non-linear scripting throughout the app.

In terms of components, libraries are readily available. And yes, if you are poor with visual design, you app will look like crap, that’s why you need a designer!

FL 1.1 and 2.0 are very different, due to AS0.5 and AS2.0, as well as the additional fscommand2 properties.

This is not easy, but once you wrap your head around the concepts, you can execute prototypes that work on various devices in a very small amount of time; oh and they blow J2ME and Brew apps out of the water in terms of visual quality, that is, assuming you or someone on you team has graphic design chops.

You can test out my newest FL2.0 app @ http://www.journeyofjin.com

Thanks for the great discussion!

You’ve said:
“I would like to see a clear separation between code, and UI design and elements…”

(sorry if someone told you this before.. haven’t got time to read the comments)

I’m working with Flash since 2001. And I agree with some of your opinions, but as I’ve saw you haven’t unleashed the full power of Flash ActionScript. I’ve developed a lot of applications only using ActionScript and UIComponents provided by Flash. You have the Events, you just have to use them….

Indeed the straigth line that you see it at the begining is that Flash is “linear”, but no, it is not. You can use it like this and this is for beginners, who want to do stunning animations for web sites… But as a programmer you have the power of ActionScript … you don’t even have to use layers or frames … you can do all from Action Script you can develope classes objects and use events … you don’t have to use the Timeline ….

I”m, sorry but I’m not a god narator … I don’t have teaching skills … but I hope that I make myself clear enough to make you curios about this. And I wish you luck in learning AS 2.0 … and also the other ways of using flash.

ceo

Tom Landspurg wrote a good piece, his perspective on Flash Lite, check it out - Another Flash from J2me developer perspective (Part1)

From the Flash Lite website:

What Is Flash Lite?

Flash Lite is the Flash technology specifically develope….

But when I try to drag and drop something from the component menu, it says that it can not be done in FlashLite1.1 or something like this.

I also agree about the fact that things can be done differently in Flash. But then, we loose a lot of the advantage of an integrated IDE. If you go into this direction, the general complexity will increase, right?

I’m not sure I understand. There are plenty of pre-built UI components (menus, scrollbars…) for ActionScript 1. The ActionScript 2 versions are better, and now more numerous, of course, and more fully featured. Am I missing something?

Those components have methods associated with them that let you (for example) populate the menus, set event handlers, etc. All through code. Search the Adobe developer center for “menu component”. (http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00003811.html will be helpful too)

As for designing applications that are not timeline based, it’s really just a matter of instantiating objects and writing the code to make them “do things” when other objects command them to do so. You could easily make an application on a single frame with one of the menu components. In the simplest example, the menu component is instantiated with menu options you specify (through code). You write some methods in another object to receive the menu’s change event, and have those other components do things in response. The user is told to select an item from the menu. The other object reacts to the choice the user made. (Show or hide itself, make a beep, display “Hello!” or “You chose [value of item]”) Etc. All without the playhead advancing through a timeline.

Graphic objects and animations using them can be created and controlled programmatically, using code, without specifying start and end keyframes. See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/animation_guide_15.html for an example of the Drawing API and a movie that has all its animation-controlling code in a single frame–or more likely, external ActionScript class files (which means there’s no mystery about where to find the code…:) They’re just like Java classes (though I’m not a Java expert) and it is (or should be) no more difficult to find code in a properly designed Flash application than a Java app. You simply browse the packages in your editor of choice (see below).

For an example of controlling prgrammaticly tweened animations with the (relatively new) Tween class see http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00004142.html

I don’t have any non-proprietary examples I can show you (the ones I have handy are all confidential), but I’ve build numerous data driven applications where the UI objects all exist on timelines consisting of a single frame. I guess that might still count as a timeline in some people’s minds, but it’s very much simpler than the example you show above.

As for the shortcomings of the Flash IDE, I don’t know any ActionScript coders who use the ActionScript editor in Flash. Most people (I know) use Eclipse or Sepy. Third party compilers like MTASC can take the place of the one built-into the Flash IDE.

This got long and a little unwieldy. I don’t know if helps, but I hope it did, at least a little.

So, thanks for the link, I will try Sepy but who have an example of what I am describing? Typically: a FlashLite2.0 app (seems the minimum requirement) with custom designed UI component inherited from Macromedia UI component with a non timebased approach?

For what concerns the IDE, you can use some good freeware 3rd party tool to write actionscript code such as Sepy of Eclipse with FAME plugins.

Though the Flash IDE doesn’t really have a view like the NetBeans screenshot you show, Flash components, objects and applications made up of them can behave in exactly that way.