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Evtim Georgiev

Evtim Georgiev

evtimmy.com

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Comparing Spark and Halo layouts
  3. Working with Spark layouts
  4. Creating a custom Spark layout
Created:
20 July 2009
Modified:
4 October 2009
User Level:
Intermediate
Products:
Flex

Spark layouts with Flex 4 beta

Note: This article was created based on Flex 4 beta 1. However it still applies to Flex 4 beta 2.

Spark, the new component and skinning architecture in Flex 4 beta, brings a lot to the RIA table and addresses a number of pain points in skinning, CSS, components, states, animation, text, graphics tags, layouts, and more.

In this article I'm going to focus on Spark layouts. I will provide an overview of the major architectural differences between Spark and Flex 3 layouts. After a brief discussion of usage differences I'll step through creating a custom Spark layout—a simple flow layout class.

Throughout this article the term Halo refers to layouts, components, and the general architecture of the Flex 3 framework. The term Spark refers to layouts, components, and the general architecture introduced with Flex 4 beta.

Requirements

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

Flex 4 beta

Flash Builder 4 beta (not strictly required, but useful and free)

Sample files:

Prerequisite knowledge

This article assumes knowledge of the Flex 3 Framework.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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About the author

Evtim Georgiev has worked as a Flex SDK Computer Scientist since early 2008. Previously, Evtim worked at Microsoft on the PowerPoint application and developed CGI fluid dynamics software for a Bulgarian startup company.