Adobe ®Flex® 4.5 and Adobe®Flash® Builder™ 4.5 for Enterprise Mobile Development

With the latest release of Adobe Flex 4.5 and Flash Builder 4.5, building and incorporating mobile applications into your enterprise development stack just got a whole lot easier.  Flex 4.5 extends the Flex framework to include new mobile specific components, multi-resolution support, and the ability to optimize existing components to work efficiently on mobile devices. Flash Builder 4.5’s improvements include productivity enhancements, tighter integration with ANT, advanced device configurations, and the ability to quickly deploy to multiple targets.

Framework Improvements

The Flex SDK team had originally planned to have two frameworks for Flex: one for mobile development and another for the different device profiles.  However, through some good planning and hard work, they were able to combine the planned additions into the existing Flex framework, giving it a massive performance overhaul while still including the new components necessary for mobile applications.

Mobile Components

Included in Flex 4.5 are two new application types specifically created to speed up enterprise mobile development. The first, ViewNavigatorApplication, includes another new component, the ViewNavigator, which facilitates the pushing and popping of the new View component. This typical mobile paradigm moves users through different views of the application. Along with being a container for views, the ViewNavigator includes the ActionBar, a component that provides common mobile navigation for your views.

While you can design an application that doesn’t utilize the ActionBar, this component can save you a lot of development effort because it includes prebuilt segments for navigation, title information, and actionable items.

The second new application type is the TabbedViewNavigatorApplication which is similar to the ViewNavigatorApplication with a few slight differences. The first and most notable difference is that the TabbedViewNavigatorApplication has the ability to hold multiple ViewNavigators. This seemingly simple addition makes it easy to get the tabbed mobile view that users have come to expect. The second helpful addition is the tabbed bar that is included to facilitate navigation between the views of the application.

Performance Upgrades

Smaller processors, limited battery life, and reduced memory can all lead to serious performance issues with mobile development. The Flex SDK and AIR teams took all this into account and spent many development cycles optimizing both the framework and the runtime respectively.

In the Flex 4 release we saw the addition of Spark components to the Flex framework. These components are distinct from the existing Halo components as they adhere to a new skinning contract. This advanced skinning model makes it easy for components to be radically different with just a simple change to the component’s “skin”.

In Flex 4.5 the Flex SDK team reworked the skins specifically for mobile devices, upgrading the visual appearance, and adding specific optimizations for rendering and memory performance. Additionally, with the new touch specific support for all skins, components such as the List now support fling gestures with full physics bounce effects when you reach the end of a list. These improvements provide a host of enterprise ready mobile components created for large-scale mobile applications.

Multi-Density Support

One issue new to mobile development is the need to have one application run on a variety of devices each with different levels of pixel density. The Flex framework handles this issue with gusto by providing multi-resolution skin support and the ability to easily swap graphics based on the device’s resolution. Flex continues to simplify the issue of varying pixel densities by creating three resolution buckets: 160, 240, and 320 dpi. Because each device on the market falls into one of these ‘dpi buckets’, adding multi-device support to your application is as easy as designing your application for each of these three resolution targets. 

Tooling Upgrades

Built on Eclipse, Flash Builder 4.5 is the latest Flash Builder release. Previous Flash Builder releases assisted developers in creating expressive Flex based applications by providing code completion, a visual editor titled “Design View”, middle tier integration, application debugging, and performance profiling. The latest version of Flash Builder builds on these strengths by adding upgrades to its current toolbox and by adding features such as “Quick Assist” and device integration.

One big improvement to Flash Builder is the ability to create and edit ActionScript only projects. No longer is Flash Builder tied to just Flex projects, meaning that enterprise ActionScript developers can use Flash Builder and it’s premier features without having to use the Flex framework.

Quick Assist Additions

One focus of the Flash Builder 4.5  release was to improve developer’s productivity by making the tool more helpful with everyday tasks. The Flash Builder team accomplished this by adding a host of features meant to take repetitive code typing off of developers’ hands.

The first “Quick Assist” feature is called “Organize Imports”.  With a quick keystroke, all of your class’s import statements will be validated and organized -- unneeded imports will be removed from the class. Organize Imports helps you keep your classes as light as possible while making your imports easy to read.

The second “Quick Assist” feature is the editable code templates. This context aware feature provides code segments based on templates. Again, with a keystroke, the code to create a property, event handler, loops, or any other repetitive code segment is easily accessible. Even more helpful is the ability to create your own templates and modify the provided templates to meet your coding needs.

The third “Quick Assist” feature is called “Generate from Usage,” which makes it easy to create variables, methods, or classes without having to break your current workflow or project. This is powerful because it allows a developer to keep working straight through their coding session in a single thought. Not having to stop my current thought to create another class or method better allows me to keep on task and to produce more code with fewer distractions.

The fourth “Quick Assist” feature is the CSS and Metadata code completion. Previously unavailable, Flash Builder now gives you completion options for your code as you type CSS properties or a Metadata tag, reducing the amount of time developers have to research available properties and metadata.

These are just some of the many new or improved features that have been built into Flash Builder 4.5. In addition to improvements to code refactoring, classic features like “rename” have been extended to include method renaming along with the new ability to customize templates for new files. These features together make Flash Builder the premier IDE for editing Flex and ActionScript.

Improved Design Mode

“Design Mode” gives developers the ability to quickly layout applications and to see the effects of visual and state changes live – before compilation.  Flash Builder 4.5  improves the speed and effectiveness of the design view through a faster renderer as well as better integration with custom components.

For mobile development, the design view has been extended to include live device simulation and orientation.  As enterprise developers need to work with a variety of devices, these features help them simulate mobile application views and changes live. The ability to test applications on a variety of resolutions and sizes can greatly decrease an application’s time-to-market.

Upgraded PHP Integration

Using Flash Builder 4.5, PHP/Flex developers can quickly create PHP services using a service wizard and debug directly on both projects. Built into Flash Builder 4.5  is the ability to create, edit, and connect directly to a PHP project. This feature is dependent on the popular Zend framework, combining many helpful features from Zend and the expressive abilities of the Flex framework.

Continuous Integration with ANT

This is my second favorite new feature in the new Flash Builder. Out of the box Flash Builder 4.5 comes with ANT loaded into the IDE.  This feature allows for ANT integration scripts to work reliably without the need to install ANT on your own. However, if you want to install your own Eclipse plug-ins this too is now easier than ever. Flash Builder 4.5 now plugs directly into the Eclipse Marketplace allowing you to search and install plug-ins to extend your Flash Builder application.

Device Deployment and Simulation

This is my favorite new feature in Flash Builder 4.5. With an increased emphasis on enterprise mobile development, the need to test, run and release to a variety of devices easily is very important.

You now have the ability to run your mobile application right on your computer -- Flash Builder will properly simulate the size of the device you select in your run options. Additionally, if the device configuration that you require doesn’t exist in Flash Builder, you can add new device configurations as needed with just a few simple selections.

Another option is to run your application directly on the device via USB. Flash Builder installs your application on the connected device and initiates a debug session. In one keystroke you are running and testing your application right on the connected device and can be sure your application runs properly.

Finally, after all of your testing, you can release your application to an Android, iOS, or BlackBerry device using the release built option in Flash Builder. The final release file can simultaneously be installed on a connected device and prepared for uploading to any of the mobile application markets.

Wrap-Up

The new features in Flex 4.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 are a paradigm shift for enterprise mobile developers. The improved workflow associated with creating, running, debugging your mobile applications and releases makes Flex 4.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 a cornerstone for enterprise mobile developers.