Adobe Flex Builder Pro 3.0

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Product Features

• Enables intelligent coding; interactive step-through debugging; and visual design of user interface layout, appearance, and behavior of business-critical RIAs
• Ability to import assets from Adobe Creative Suite 3 makes it easy for designers and developers to work together
• Take advantage of editors for MXML, ActionScript, and CSS; syntax coloring; statement completion; code collapse; interactive step-through debugging; and more
• Visually design and preview user interface layout, appearance, and behavior using a rich library of built-in or custom components
• All of the powerful features included in Flex Builder 3 Standard, plus powerful testing tools and interactive data visualization

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0014A0V5E
• Item model number: 38044388
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 22, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,143 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

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Product Description

Amazon.com

Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional software is a productive Eclipse based development tool for creating business-critical rich Internet applications that run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR, enabling intelligent coding, interactive step-through debugging, and visual layout and design of the user interface.

Content Assist displays code completion hints as you enter MXML, ActionScript, and CSS code.

In MXML Design mode, you interact with your Flex applications visually; dragging and dropping components on to the design area, selecting and resizing components, and so on.

To support a particular task or group of tasks, editors and supporting views are combined into a perspective. Flex Builder contains two perspectives: Flex Debugging and Flex Development. Flex Builder Professional contains an additional perspective, Flex Profiling.

When you create a project, Flex Builder switches into the Development perspective so you can begin developing your application

Top reasons to buy Adobe Flex Builder 3 Powerful coding tools: Take advantage of editors for MXML, ActionScript, and CSS; syntax coloring; statement completion; code collapse; interactive step-through debugging; and more. Rich visual layout: Visually design and preview user interface layout, appearance, and behavior using a rich library of built-in components. Create or extend those components easily if you need to. Interactive data visualization: Create data dashboards and interactive data analysis by simply dragging and dropping a chart type and linking it to a data source using the Flex Charting library. Skinning and styling: Customize the appearance of an application using CSS and graphical property editors to quickly set the most commonly used properties and preview the results in Design view. Integration with Creative Suite 3: Import ready-to-use creative assets directly into Flex quickly and easily with new Flex Skin Design extensions for Adobe Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks software. Code refactoring: Find references to classes, variables, and methods, and rename them easily. Native support for Adobe AIR: Build desktop applications with the same skills and codebase as your RIAs with new desktop components and Adobe AIR development tools. Powerful testing tools: Use memory and performance profilers to investigate memory use and analyze where applications are using resources. Automated functional testing support, now included in Flex Builder Professional, enables regression testing. Advanced data services: Invoke web services or request XML data via HTTP using a rich, built-in library of data access services. Use open-source BlazeDS to easily connect applications to back-end services, leveraging Remoting and AMF, a binary, high-performance HTTP-based data transport. You can also add real-time data push and pub/sub messaging. Open-source framework: Beginning with Flex 3, the entire Flex framework is now available as an open-source project. Flex Remoting and Flex Messaging are also available as open source in BlazeDS.

Powerful coding tools
Adobe Flex Builder 3 is a powerful Eclipse based IDE that includes editors for MXML, ActionScript, and CSS, as well as syntax coloring, statement completion, code collapse, interactive step-through debugging, and more.

Rich visual layout (Enhanced in Flex Builder 3)
Visually design and preview user interface layout, appearance, and behavior using a rich library of built-in components. Extend the built-in components or create new ones as needed.

New in Flex 3--Interactively set and preview CSS values on any of your components in Flex Builder design view.

Interactive data visualization (Enhanced in Flex Builder 3) (Professional edition only)
Create data dashboards and interactive data analyses by simply dragging and dropping a chart type and linking it to a data source using the Flex charting library. Use the powerful new Advanced Datagrid to enable users to explore complex data.

New in Flex 3--Use the powerful new Advanced Datagrid to enable users to explore complex data. Charts have also been enhanced with new interaction support, a drawing API, and support for multiple axes.

Skinning and styling (Enhanced in Flex Builder 3)
Customize the appearance of an application using CSS and graphical property editors. Quickly set the most commonly used properties, and preview the results in design view.

New in Flex Builder 3--Design View within Flex Builder has also been enhanced to support rendering of skins and styles, allowing designers and developers to update properties and visualize how they affect each skin without needing to rebuild the application.

Integration with Adobe Creative Suite 3 (New in Flex Builder 3)
New Flex Skin Design Extensions for Adobe Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks make it fast and easy to import ready-to-use creative assets directly into Flex Builder 3. Use the new Adobe Flex Component Kit for Adobe Flash CS3 Professional to create interactive, animated content in Flash that can then be exported as a Flex component.

Code refactoring (New in Flex Builder 3)
The new Flex Builder 3 refactoring engine allows developers to quickly navigate through code or to quickly restructure code by renaming all references to a class, method, or variable.

Native support for Adobe AIR (New in Flex Builder 3)
Flex Builder 3 provides the fastest way to create applications for Adobe AIR, including all the tools required to build, debug, package, and sign AIR applications. The Adobe AIR runtime lets you quickly develop RIAs for the desktop using the same skills and code-base you use to build RIAs for the browser.

Powerful testing tools (New in Flex Builder 3) (Professional edition only)
The Flex Builder 3 memory and performance profilers enable developers to improve application performance by providing tools to monitor and analyze memory consumption and CPU cycles. Support for automated functional testing tools such as HP QuickTest Professional (formerly Mercury QuickTest Professional), is also now available in Flex Builder 3 Professional.

Advanced data services (New in Flex Builder 3)
Invoke web services or request XML or other data via HTTP using a rich, built-in library of data access services. Use open source BlazeDS to easily connect applications to back-end services leveraging Flex Remoting and Messaging, providing, a binary, high-performance, HTTP-based data transport, plus real-time data push and pub/sub messaging.

Flex 2 and 3 SDK support (New in Flex Builder 3)
Flex Builder 3 can create applications based on either the Flex 2 SDK or the Flex 3 SDK, enabling developers to leverage many of the great new Flex Builder 3 capabilities while maintaining Flex 2 applications.

Improved project workflows (New in Flex Builder 3)
Use new Flex Builder 3 project wizards to support the most common back ends. New wizards make it fast and easy to get started, whether you're using PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Java. Workflow for developers using LiveCycle Data Services is improved as well. Lastly, improved project portability support enables developers to share projects and application settings more easily.

Web Service introspection (New in Flex Builder 3)
Flex Builder 3 can now retrieve a WSDL and generate ActionScript proxies to make calls and serialize/deserialize strongly-typed objects. New code hinting is available for making Web service calls and dealing with responses.

Product Description

ADOBE FLEX BUILDER PRO 3.0

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flex Builder 3 Pro is the Xcode of web application development, August 31, 2008

By	Scott Gardner "Mac Consultant & Web Developer" (Central IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Flex 3, the framework and the Flex Builder 3 Pro IDE (just "Flex" from now on), are perhaps the best kept secret in programming I've witnessed (this being the first Amazon review for a product released back in February? Amazing!). Specific to web development, I've worked with several other scripting languages (e.g., Javascript, PHP, Python, and Ruby) and their available frameworks, assistive text editors, and integrated development environments like Dreamweaver, Servoy, and Eclipse (which is what Flex Builder runs on). These are all fine approaches to building web applications, but for my time, effort, and money, Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3 Pro (Eclipse) is my top choice.

Flex offers a three-tiered approach to building powerful applications and "rich" user experiences. The first tier is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) design mode editor. You can create the lion's share of your application, and practically the entire user interface and design themes (which are CSS-based), in design mode. Next, Flex offers a simple and lean XML-based language (MXML), which serves as a framework and front-end for ActionScript (i.e., Flash). You code in MXML (with considerably fewer lines of code than it would take to code directly in ActionScript), and the the compiler automatically generates your ActionScript from your MXML. For maximum tweaking and customization, you can code directly in ActionScript. You can and usually will, of course, mix the three approaches within one application, and this is remarkably easy and integrated. Documentation is comprehensive. The Flex component and style explorers are awesome. The community is generous and helpful, and there's lot's of free source code, examples, etc.

So, this is as much a 5-star review for Flex 3 as it is for Flex Builder 3 Pro. I cannot imagine using one without the other.

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to setup and learn, July 18, 2009

By	sangli1 - See all my reviews

I'm an Adobe fan and have written Java and this IDE was really easy to learn. Check out this helpful tutorials online if you're new or haven't coded for awhile and need a refresher.. [...]