I posted last year about how to get help on an MXML tag in Flex Builder, but I have another tip that I've been using quite a lot lately.

The source to the Flex framework is actually included with the Flex SDK built into Flex Builder. If you want to view the actual source code to an MXML tag (like RemoteObject) or even an ActionScript class or method, you can hold down Command (on the Mac) or Control (Windows) and hover over the name of the object in Source view. The class should be underlined, and is now a link to the source code of that class.

But it doesn't stop with the Flex framework: this even works with your own classes. Why is this important? If you have your project source files structured into nice named packages (like com.mycompany.myproject.*), you can get some pretty deep folder structures (see screen shot at right). Eclipse will generally collapse these folders for you if you're using the Java developer tools, but no such luck with Flex Builder.

By using the Command/Control-Click trick, you can pop anywhere within your source code base fairly quickly. This is really handy when you're chasing down a bug.

We're in the midst of building an interesting Rich Internet Application for educational assessment using Flex. We've had a lot of success with our process thus far, so I thought it would be helpful to document it as a means of discussing it and maybe improving it for our next project.

One of the great aspects of this particular project is that we've done the design collaboratively with an interdisciplinary team, including technologists, instructional designers, and even a faculty member or two.

Here's a pic of our screen designs and the application state diagram:

I'll break this down into detail in upcoming posts.

Next up: Iterative design.

Since FlexBuilder 3 was released last week, I decided to hunt around for the 'free to academics' offer and see if it applies to FlexBuilder 3. Here's where it lives now:

http://www.flexregistration.com/

Interesting things to note:

1. It apparently does apply to staff too (woo!)
2. You can request more than one license if you're using it for a class or a lab. That will be a real time-saver.
3. You have to scan your ID and submit it with the form. Uhh... scan? paper? I don't have a scanner hooked up anywhere, so I took a photo of my ID with the iSight on MacBook Pro and tried that, thumb included free of charge.

The action page tells you to allow a few weeks for processing the request, but mine was approved the next day.... that's service!

I'm doing a lot more Flex development lately, and I found a nice little keyboard shortcut in Flex Builder 3 that I wanted to note someplace.

If you want the documentation on an MXML tag, select the tag name and hit Shift-F2.

AIR lets your Flex apps open, move, and control native OS windows, either with or without chrome. Very slick.

Moving on to interacting with the OS filesystem...

-Brian P.

Adobe is announcing plans to open source Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

More information is available on Adobe Labs.

At last! Adobe Apollo, the new cross-platform runtime for building rich internet applications is now available on Adobe Labs:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

I've been reading and hearing about Apollo for what seems like a year... I'll have to take some of my off-week between classes to give this a test drive by converting some of my Flex 2 applications to Apollo applications.

Internet Explorer 7 is finally available for Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server. Time to start taking it seriously I suppose.

In unrelated news, Flash Player 9 (good for Flex 2) is now available for Linux.

Which pill will it be, Neo?