Course Synopsis: Flex 2: Programming the Visual Experience provides experienced Flex developers with hands-on, practical experience implementing common graphical and interactive requirements illustrated by designer and project mockups. This three-day course instructs programmers how to work with embedded images and fonts, implement transitions and easing effects, apply filters and blends, and programmatically interact with mouse position and actions like dragging and dropping. In addition, students will learn how to extend and skin Flex UI components using both images and shapes drawn
with the ActionScript Drawing API.

Who Should Attend: This course is designed for students that have attended the Flex 2: Developing Rich Client Applications course. Graphic design is not a prerequisite for this course.

Prerequisites: To gain the most from this class, you should:
• Have attended the Flex 2: Developing Rich Client Applications course.
• Have equivalent knowledge of the topics covered in Flex 2: Developing Rich Client Application course.

What You Will Learn:
• Modifying the look-and-feel in Flex
• Using bindable variables for imagery
• Applying blends and fi lters
• MXML styles
• Extending Flex components
• View States and Transitions
• Skinning the Application
• Handling data in drag and drop operations

Time: Class time is 9:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. Breaks are scheduled throughout the day and lunch is typically scheduled 12-1. Students provide their own lunch.

Locations: We have company-operated facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, San Diego and Washington DC. We also work with a network of rental facilities to offer our classes regularly across the United States and in Canada. Please double-check the location of your class with our office to make sure you get to the right location.

Related Courses: We recommend the following courses that relate to this class: Adobe Flash CS3 Action Script and Flex 2.0 Developing Rich Client Applications. Please take a look at our other course outlines at our web site, http://www.ledet.com.

Goals: Sterling Ledet and Associates realizes the importance of education and we take pride in being able to offer you classes that are more custom fit to your needs. Call us at (770) 414-5007 if you have any special questions or e-mail us at sales@ledet.com.

Registration: Please fill out our registration form and fax it to us at (312) 896-9094.

Adobe Flex 2.0 Training Course Outline

LESSON 1
Flex 2: Programming the Visual
Experience
• Modifying the default look-and-feel of
Flex applications
• Introducing Mastery Learning
• Understanding the Course Format
• Reviewing the course prerequisites
• Reviewing the course outline
• Setting up the application files

LESSON 2
Enhancing the application with
imagery and layering
• Adding background colors and imagery
to the application
• Adding an application background image
• Adding imagery to the Natural Experiences application
• Layering content using absolute layout
• Creating a reusable embedded image
• Creating instances of an embedded
image class
• Using bindable variables for imagery
• Creating simple popup functionality

LESSON 3
Enhancing the application with fonts,
filters and blends
• Understanding the limitations of device
fonts
• Learning the limitations of device fonts
• Embedding fonts with direct calls to the
font files in the file system
• Embedding fonts using FlashType
• Exploring advanced FlashType
settings
• Exploring filters
• Exploring filter properties
• Applying blends

LESSON 4
Modifying the look-and-feel of Flex
components graphically
• Exploring 9-slice scaling
• Exploring 9-slice scaling
• Modifying the look-and-feel of Flex
components using MXML styles
• Modifying the Natural Experiences
• Modifying graphical skins using
Adobe Flash templates

LESSON 5
Extending Flex Components
• Learning display object basics
• Exploring the non-content children
• Introducing the DisplayObject class and its subclasses
• Extending Flex components
• Creating an extended component
• Implementing the createChildren()
method
• Implementing the updateDisplayList() method
• Calling the updateDisplayList() method of the super class
• Improving custom component reusability with stylesheets

LESSON 6
Drawing shapes and programmatically modifying the look-and-feel of Flex components
• Understanding the relationship between
display list objects and the Graphics class
• Calling the clear() method
• Exploring the clear() method
• Drawing lines
• Using the scaleMode argument of the
lineStyle() method
• Ordering the lineStyle() method arguments
• Using line methods to draw a star
• Creating a visual element as an ActionScript class
• Creating shapes
• Defining fill methods
• Implementing a ButtonSkin from the
• mx.skins.halo package
• Implementing a programmatic skin

LESSON 7
Animating components and state
changes
• Reviewing Behaviors
• Defining behavior triggers
• Applying behaviors
• Creating a fly-in popup component
• Reviewing View States and Transitions
• Using the CurrentStateChange change
event
• Understanding the order of events and
transitions
• Setting a custom component’s size for
state changes
• Handling child components that become
invisible in transitions

LESSON 8
Passing data between components to
affect layout and data display
• Creating custom component properties
• Passing and displaying XML photo data in the gallery
• Reviewing the Repeater component
• Using dynamic data in the Repeater
• Using currentItem with a complex data
structure
• Using Repeater data in ActionScript
• Calculating custom component size
• Creating a more flexible tile display

LESSON 9
Creating mouse-aware application
features
• Detecting the mouse position
• Moving the popup to the mouse position
• Detecting the stage dimensions
• Creating animation using the Timer class
• Understanding easing

LESSON 10
Implementing Drag and Drop
Functionality
• Understanding the DragManager
• Enable drag and drop functionality in a drag enabled component
• Specifying the data to display in a List
control
• Enabling dragging on non-list-based controls
• Controlling dropping with formats
• Handling data in drag and drop operations
• Viewing data in the DragSource