Flex Article

Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm microarchitecture – Part 3: Architecting the View

Part 2 of this series focused on managing state within rich Internet applications using the Value Object and Model Locator patterns. In Part 3, the aim is to reach out to your application's users. While the concept of holding state on the client empowers developers, it means nothing to users unless they can visualize and interact with that state in a meaningful way. Part 3 continues to demonstrate concepts by example, again using samples from the Cairngorm Store.

The Cairngorm Store displays product images so that users can select products, view further details on them, drag and drop them into their shopping cart, and purchase these products in a checkout process. In this article, we'll explore how to architect the view and deliver rich, immersive experiences to users using the Cairngorm framework. We’ll describe some best practices that you can use to structure your MXML code and files, even though Cairngorm does not prescribe any specific way to structure your view.

• Part 1: Introducing Cairngorm
• Part 2: Keeping state on the client
• Part 3: Architecting the view
• Part 4: Feature-driven development
• Part 5: Server-side integration
• Part 6: Rapid and consistent development with Cairngorm and Flex

Requirements

In order to make the most of this series, you need the following software and files:

Flex Builder 3

• Try
• Buy

Cairngorm version 2.2

• Download Cairngorm version 2.2

Cairngorm Store

Throughout the series you will find references to code taken from an e-commerce application named Cairngorm Store. You may use this sample application to gain a better understanding of Cairngorm, but please consider it only as a guide. Adobe is not responsible for maintaining the Cairngorm Store application.

• Download Cairngorm Store (J2EE Container version)
• Download Cairngorm Store (non J2EE Container version)

Prerequisites

Read the previous articles in the series, starting with Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm microarchitecture – Part 1: Introducing Cairngorm before reading Part 3.

Page 1 of 4

Next Page

About the authors