On Mar 25, 2008, at 3:35 AM, Chris Velevitch wrote: > The > primary use of the Flash IDE is to create timeline-based animations. >
I have to call you on that one... I use the Flash IDE pretty much every day and can't remember the last time I created a timeline-based animation. Basically, there are three Adobe-provided solutions for creating Flash content. 1. Flash IDE. 2. Flex Builder. 3. Flex SDK. The Flash IDE has existed for over 10 years. It started out as a timeline animation tool but grew more and more into a development environment as the years went by. Unfortunately, its dual nature confused a lot of people, so Flex Builder was created as a pure coding tool. Flash allows you to do timeline animations, contains a rich set of WYSIWYG drawing and creative graphics tools, as well as a (sub-par) coding environment including a full set of UI and media components. I don't know if there is a "primary use" of Flash, but MY primary use is creating quick prototypes of applications, and creating graphic libraries to be used in Flex Builder based AS3 projects. I am currently developing a set of UI components for the Ribbit platform (www.ribbit.com ) that will allow you to create VOIP (telephone) applications right in Flash. Flash uses an .fla file as the main container for a project. this .fla contains all the graphics, animation, sound, font, etc. assets, and can contain code as well. It can include additional .as files for external ActionScript classes. Flex Builder is an Eclipse-based development environment. It is misnamed because you can create both Flex projects and pure AS3 projects, as well as AIR desktop applications. I also use Flex Builder pretty much every day, and rarely if ever do anything with Flex. The Flex SDK is a free, command line compiler for AS3 and Flex projects, which includes the Flex framework. Flex Builder and the Flex SDK use straight .as files for ActionScript classes, and can embed other graphics, etc. at compile time. Keith Peters [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
