building flex applications in eclipse

Question

I installed eclipse and the FDT plugin. Now i would like to create a flex project.

I am wondering how to get a designer for the mxml where i could drag and drop lists, buttong and build a UI in flex.

I am totally new to flex.

Also, once i have that, if I build that as an application, it seems to generate a swf file. Not sure if i can run this in anything other than a brower. The latest adobe flash player has not standalone exe.

I would like to understand the recommended workflow if I need to build a flex application. I am basically looking at developing a desktop/web application that has fusion charts to visualize certain data.

Answer 1

I am wondering how to get a designer for the mxml where i could drag and drop lists, buttong and build a UI in flex.

The current version of Flash Builder has one, and I thought that was the only Flex IDE that had a design view. The Flash Builder design view is limited, as it only works with the current version of the Flex SDK and is all around problematic. Most developer's don't ues it and the feature will be removed in the next version of Flash Builder.

I've heard rumors that IntelliJ may add one in a future version, but I wouldn't count on it.

Once i have that, if I build that as an application, it seems to generate a swf file. Not sure if i can run this in anything other than a brower. The latest adobe flash player has not standalone exe.

Correct; a Flex project's primary intent is to build an SWf file that will run in the browser. At one time Adobe offered a stand alone player that the SWF would run it. I'm not sure if they still do. It was not practical to assume end users had the stand alone version of the Flash Player, though.

I have no idea if FDT supports this; but you can use the same, or similar, code with Adobe AIR to create an AIR file. The AIR file should run anywhere that the AIR runtime can be installed. If you use the Adobe AIR Captive Runtime feature on a windows PC you can create an executable.

Answer 2

Idea won't ever get a design view, because it requires a special version of the Flash player built into the IDE. This in turn requires access to the Player source code, and adding a bunch of platform-specific JNDI junk to your IDE. And given that even Adobe is dropping support for the design view, it's apparently not economically viable to maintain that special version, even if you have the sources to Player and the right to use them.