Actionscript 3 outside of Flash / Flex

Question

I've just finished a flash project where I did the entire project in "pure" AS3, without the use of the Flex framework. I found very little written about this on the web, so I'm not sure if this is a common way to develop RIA's, or if I've jumped off the shoulders of giants and done something stupid that will bite me later.

It seemed like a good idea at the time (famous last words!), but was hoping to hear from someone who could confirm.

Thanks, Marcus

Tollmann

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with it. People do that every day using FlashDevelop and AS3-only frameworks like PureMVC. Doing a complex app without any framework to support may get difficult to support in the future, but should be OK if you adhere to well known best practices. Future maintainability, especially if it has to be maintained be someone else, can also be greatly improved by using common design patterns throughout your code and architecture. Barring all that, if you're really just slinging code to build something with any real complexity, you're probably screwed unless you documented every function and the overall architecture very very well. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day you're (or someone else is) screwed! ;)

Epiglottis

Answer 2

Flex is nice if you want to create something that looks great real fast within the confines of what the Flex framework gives you.

We used to fight weird framework bugs which Adobe didn't seem to care about or took way too long to fix. So we opted to drop Flex in favor of our own UI framework and we've never looked back since.

Peh

wow, that's fascinating. I have built a lot more stuff in Flash recently and I use those components in Flex, but I still rely heavily on Flex. do you have any public apps that I could view? – Abbottson

Answer 3

Sounds like a perfectly good idea. Flex is really just an overlay of rapid-prototyping, and communication standards, on top of pure AS3.

What you gain in ease of development and a large library and API, you lose in streamlined, strength and simplicity.

I'm currently developing a medium sized app in Flex and although the first phase of development was a breeze, the later stages have been fraught with weird framework eccentricities.

Endogenous

Perfectly echoes my experiences. My conclusion was that Flex is best for rapid prototypes, and on the other hand for VERY big projects where the time required to create and tweak custom components can be justified. For medium sized projects, you're better off using pure AS3. – Forebear

Answer 4

It is definitely okay. For example, I've heard that the Issuu.com platform is not based on Flex but a custom framework.

Beckmann

Answer 5

Thanks all! I've been very happy with AS3, and like the amount of control I get, as opposed to using MXML/Flex. It's good to hear I'm not crazy!

Tollmann

How are you doing visual components, then? All by inheriting Application and adding child and all that? – Abbottson

There's no Application class in AS3, that is a Flex framework class. Here's a link to the Adobe documentation on display programming: xrl.us/betio9 – Forebear