Recipe 1.1.
Creating an ActionScript Project
Problem
You've
launched Flex Builder 2 and want to create an ActionScript
project.
Solution
Use the New
ActionScript Project Wizard
to set up your project.
Discussion
An ActionScript project usually consists of at
least one class file and a folder named bin that contains the SWF and HTML files output by the
compiler. It also consists of a lot of internal settings to let the
compiler know where everything is and how to compile it all. Flex
Builder 2 takes care of most of this for you when you use the New
ActionScript Project Wizard. There are a few ways to start this
wizard. You can use the menu FileNewActionScript
Project, or you can click on the New button in the top-right corner
and select ActionScript Project from the list of available projects
there. You can also click the small arrow next to the New button,
which gives you the same list.
Whichever route you take to get there, you
should wind up with the New
ActionScript Project Wizard. Here you'll be prompted to type in a
name for your project, such as ExampleApplication. Once
you've created the project, you'll notice that the main application
file is automatically set to the same name as the project name,
with a .as
extension.
Clicking the Next button gives you the
opportunity to set custom class paths, additional libraries, and
specify your output folder to something than the default
bin. For now, you don't need to do anything here, so just
press Finish to exit the wizard.
Flex Builder 2 now creates the necessary folders
and files and applies all the default compiler settings for your
project. In the Navigator
view, you should now see a ExampleApplication project, which
contains an empty bin folder and a
ExampleApplication.as class file. Note that is has created
this main class file for you automatically and has opened it up for
editing in the code view. Also, in the Outline view, you can see a tree
representation of the class, including its methods, properties, and
any import statements.
To run your new application, you can press one
of two buttons in the toolbar. One has a bug-like icon, which when
pressed debugs the application, meaning it includes some extra
information for debugging purposes and allows the use of trace
statements. The button next to ita circle with an arrowruns the
application. Both actions will create a .swf file and an
HTML file, and then launch the HTML file in your default
browser.
Of course, at this point, you haven't added
anything to the application, so it is the equivalent of testing a
blank .fla file in the
Flash IDE. But go ahead and do so just to verify that everything is
set up properly. You should get an empty web page with a blue
background.
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