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HelloFlash, a small, interactive Flash demo using the PureMVC framework has just been released. This humble demo has a big job ahead of it. It is the first to show the use of PureMVC from within the Flash IDE. Flex and AIR have their official demos, each of which illustrates not only PureMVC, but how it is used within that particular context. Now there is an example for Flash developers, using the interactive techniques you're used to, and solving many of the scalability and maintainability problems you face on a daily basis.
I must say that after a few years away from Flash, I was impressed with the latest offering. CS3 is a natural evolution of the FlashIDE. Props once again, Adobe. That standing ovation at the MAX keynote where you showed the popout menus was well deserved :) It took a while to get worked out exactly how to make the PureMVC classes available to my Flash files and if I'd have to do it for each project, or what. From the forums, I know some of you were probably scratching your heads as well. All the details on how to PureMVC-enable your Flash installation have been worked out, and added to the PureMVC download page. If you look beyond the triviality of this demo you'll see it's a pretty important one, because it demonstrates that you can build applications in Flex, Flash or AIR all using the same framework. The difference in all cases is primarily the native object model. Flex and AIR share a lot, but are quite different in terms of what you might do with them. One is browser bound, one can live on the desktop and talk to the operating system. And what do people do with Flash? Lots of stuf! RIAs? Sure, no problem. The IDE isn't the greatest for the developer workflow, but it CAN be done. Games? Oh, yeah. And why would a game need an MVC framework like an application does? Hey, the MVC pattern doesn't care one whit about your implementation goals. If we're displaying stuff to the user, letting them interact with it and tracking any sort of data at all that needs to be shared around the application, then splitting our code into the three tiers Model, View and Controller will serve us well no matter what we're trying to do. If your a Flash developer looking to write more scalable and maintainable code, check out the HelloFlash Demo. If you frequently architect/develop for Flash, Flex, and AIR, think how productive you would be using the same framework on every platform. -=Cliff> |
