Chapter 9. Building and Using UI Components

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Chapter 9. Building and Using UI Components

Before components, Flash developers had to build scroll bars, combo boxes, and so on from scratch, which often became complex and tedious . However, components were first introduced to the Flash community in Macromedia Flash MX and quickly became ubiquitous in Flash applications.

Components have fundamentally changed user interface (UI) design in Flash MX 2004. At their most basic level, Flash UI components speed up the development process by making life easier for Flash developers; they are the building blocks for applications.

Components in Flash can be divided into three different areas:

  • Data components. These enable the developer to load and manipulate information from external data sources. Current data components include extensible markup language (XML) and Web Services. Future data components might include Flash Remoting Services, Oracle databases, SQL Server databases, and others. These components are available in Flash MX Professional 2004.

  • Media components. These enable the developer to play back and control streaming media. These include the MediaController, the MediaPlayback component, and the MediaDisplay component. These components are available in Flash MX Professional 2004.

  • UI components. These enable users to interact with an application. The RadioButton, CheckBox, and TextInput components are UI components. The DataGrid component is available in Flash MX Professional 2004.

We are going to focus on building and using UI components in this chapter. The data components are covered in Chapter 12, "XML and Flash," Chapter 13, "Web Services," and Chapter 14, "Using Client-Side Data Integration."

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Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript 2.0
Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript 2.0
ISBN: 0735713804
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 162

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