Flash Flex Components

The integration of Flash and Flex remains somewhat challenging. They both continue to live in separate worlds (Catalyst seems as though it is a step towards bridging this gap). The integration is not seemless. One way I have mentioned before is to load a Flash swf in Flex then using eventing to communicate back and forth. I just came across the following video which explains how to convert a Flash application to a Flex component. It proved a little tricky at first, but when you have it working it is an excellent solution. The main steps are:

1) Download the Flex Component kit from Adobe.

2) Inside of Flash the applications class should be written:

package {
import mx.flash.UIMovieClip;

public dynamic class lessonNavigation extends UIMovieClip
{
}
}

3) In the Flash IDE menu select Commands -> Convert Symbol to Flex component. This generates a SWC

4) Copy this to your Flex project and add the swc to the projects library path.

5) You should now be able to access the component from Flex.

OpenLayers

OpenLayers is a great open source mapping client. I've not worked with it directly, since I'm focused on building mapping RIA's using Flex and Flash. But I've seen some terrific sites built using OpenLayers. Cycling Switzerland is such an example. I really like the design. Only downside is if you uncheck a checkbox within a group eg. hiking, all routes reload as against turning off just this subset

Building RIA maps

It took a while but my article for Adobe on building RIA maps in Flex has been published.