FAQ

Both Flex 4.6 and Flash Builder 4.6 provide full support for building and deploying mobile Flex and ActionScript applications for Android, Blackberry Tablet OS, iPhone, and iPad.

Yes.  There are multiple apps created with Flex that are available today, both paid and free, in all three outlets.  In addition, many of these apps are also available in the Barnes and Noble Nook store and the Amazon Android app store.

Based on what is widely available in the market today for the tablets and operating systems we support, you can take advantage of most device capabilities. When AIR supports native extensions, you can take advantage of existing native libraries and additional device capabilities.

In most cases, the performance of a Flex application will be comparable to that of native apps.

Because each platform and device type has different capabilities, screen size, and resolution, modifications will be required to support individual platforms. Using a common code library, you can make the necessary changes to your Flex code, enabling approximately 70% of your code to be reused across application platforms and devices.

•  Consistency: Flash-based applications run consistently across iOS, Android, and BlackBerry Tablet OS, but also inside the browser and on the desktop on traditional computers, so you don't have to test for browser inconsistencies across different browsers and operating systems.
• Productivity: Flex is a programming language that includes  all the familiar development constructs (strong and dynamic typing, inheritance, interfaces, etc.), and thus can help significantly improves your productivity. Flex also includes an extensive set of components and enterprise-class tooling.
• Tooling: Flash Builder is an enterprise-class IDE to develop, debug, and profile applications.
•  Expressiveness: With the Flex built-in components, effects and transitions, you can build applications that are richer and more expressive.
•  Designer/Developer Workflow: Modern mobile and desktop applications have a high production quality that can only be achieved through a tight collaboration between designers and developers. Adobe Flash Catalyst software provides a unique roundtrip workflow with Flash Builder that streamlines the collaboration process.
• Innovation: the Flash Platform has a track record of continuously raising the User Experience bar. While HTML is standardizing some existing capabilities, Flash is already introducing new, ground-breaking capabilities: in-context video conferencing, screen-sharing, consistent 3D engine, and more.

Yes, you can download a 60-day trial version of Flash Builder 4.6 Premium and start building applications today. At the end of the 60-day trial, you can purchase a license and obtain a serial number to continue using Flash Builder.

Flash Builder 4.6 is available in Chinese Simplified, English, French, German, Japanese, and Russian. Flash Builder 4.6 runs on both Microsoft® Windows® and Mac OS. For detailed information, see the Flash Builder 4.6 system requirements.

Note: The responses below are examples only and might not apply to your particular situation. They are not intended to be legal advice. In all cases, the Mozilla Public License and the Adobe Flex SDK License shall be considered definitive. You must consult a lawyer for a full understanding of your rights and obligations under these licenses

Adobe is using MPL Version 1.1 to govern the use of the Open Source Flex SDK source code. This license is used by many open source projects that need to balance the needs of the open source community and commercial software vendors. MPL and its derivatives (Eclipse Public License and Common Public License) are used by many well-known open source projects with both thriving open source communities and significant commercial users.

The Open Source Flex SDK may be redistributed in accordance with the MPL. The free Adobe Flex SDK may also be redistributed but requires the acceptance of a redistribution agreement. If you would like to redistribute only the open source SDK, your end users may download a package from Adobe that will add the freely available (but closed source) portions to the SDK.

Yes, you are allowed to redistribute the Open Source Flex SDK source code, provided you do so under the terms of the MPL.

Yes. You may use the word "Flex" in your name if you are using only the Open Source Flex SDK. If you are using the free Adobe Flex SDK, you will need to abide by the Adobe trademark guidelines. "Flex" is a trademark owned by Adobe Systems Incorporated for use only with commercial applications distributed by Adobe.

Yes. Apps created with Flex and bundled for iOS are standard iOS applications consisting only of Objective-C Bytecode. By converting the Flex application to Objective-C Bytecode there is no longer a dependency on the ActionScript Virtual Machine. The process of converting an application to native Objective-C Bytecode is one employed by numerous other technologies.

Flash Builder Standard is free for all eligible education customers. Students, faculty, and staff can get serial numbers to activate downloadable trial versions by registering on the registration site. During registration, you will be prompted to upload a copy of your student, faculty ID, or employee ID, or you can upload a letter on institutional letterhead proving your current affiliation with an educational institution. Once validated, you will be emailed a free educational serial number for Flash Builder Standard. It may take up to two weeks after the request for you to receive the serial numbers.

One of the following documents must be uploaded during registration to prove eligibility:

• A valid student ID showing current enrollment
• A valid faculty ID showing current employment
• A valid employee ID showing current employment
• A letter on an educational institution letterhead stating that the individual is either a current student or a faculty member of the institution

A scanned copy of any of these documents should be uploaded on the Flex Registration site. The scanned copy should be formatted as a GIF or PDF file.

If you are a faculty or staff member and you want to get Flash Builder for multiple machines in your lab, you can request up to 30 serial numbers in a single request on the registration site. If you need more than 30 serial numbers, you should submit multiple requests.

No, Flash Builder Standard for education is no longer available as a boxed copy.

No, Platinum Maintenance and Support or upgrade plans are only available for purchase by customers who have purchased a full license of Flash Builder Premium. Education customers can purchase Flash Builder Premium starting at US$299.

Yes. Your renewal terms allow you to continue to renew Platinum Maintenance and Support based on your initial purchase. Platinum Support is not sold separately.

Flex installation support is available for free. For technical support beyond installation issues, both developer and technical support is available for purchase. These plans include single-incident and annual unlimited-incident support. Additional information is available at the North America support or UK support page.

Complimentary installation support is available. Developer or Technical Support plans for issues beyond installation support are available for purchase. Additional information is available at the North America support or UK support page.

Both Flash and Flex applications are rendered in the browser using Adobe Flash Player software and on the desktop using the Adobe AIR runtime. Flex applications and Flash applications are both compiled into bytecode that is interpreted by the Adobe runtimes.

Flash Professional is the leading authoring tool for web developers, multimedia professionals, animators, and videographers who want to create interactive content.

Developers may find it difficult to use the Flash Professional tool to create applications. Flex provides developers who know traditional programming technologies like Java, PHP, Ajax, and .NET with an easy-to-learn application framework to create RIAs. In addition, developers can embed rich media elements inside a Flex application.

Applications developed with Flex 2, Flex 3, and Flex 4 all require Flash Player 9. Applications built with Flex 4.6 require Flash Player 10.

Yes, developers using Flash Builder can easily import custom Flex components developed with Flash Professional.

The Flex SDK includes the latest version of the Debug Flash Player for Linux® along with a command-line debugger.

Yes. Flex and Ajax technology continue to complement each other, and the included FABridge helps you integrate rich Flex components with Ajax applications. The FABridge is a small, unobtrusive library of code included in the free Flex 3 SDK that you can insert into a Flex application, a Flex component, or an empty SWF file to expose it to scripting in the browser. You can learn more about the FABridge and integration with Ajax in the Flex documentation.

Flash and Flex technology can augment Ajax to overcome chronic browser limitations in offline data access, audio/video, vector graphics, high-performance data exchange, and message-based publish/subscribe applications. In addition, LiveCycle Data Services ES2 lets you connect both Flex and Ajax-based RIAs with LiveCycle document and process services for richer interfaces that smoothly integrate with business processes.

Ajax Data Services, available with LiveCycle Data Services ES2, brings synchronous publish/subscribe messaging, cross-domain data access, advanced data management, and offline data access to Ajax-style applications. BlazeDS can also be used with Ajax applications using Flash Player as an interface.

LiveCycle Data Services (formerly Flex Data Services) enables you to:

• Easily integrate RIAs with LiveCycle document and process services
• Create data-intensive RIAs with less code, less risk, and accelerated time to market thanks to an innovative client-server programming model
• Enable offline Adobe AIR and real-time data streaming applications to be built in a scalable and reliable manner with robust publish and subscribe messaging
• Integrate RIAs with existing applications, back-end data, and J2EE infrastructure
• Generate PDF documents based on preauthored templates from RIAs that include graphical assets, such as graphs and charts
• Leverage model-driven application development techniques to accelerate development

To learn more about LiveCycle Data Services and the benefits of building Flex applications that smoothly integrate with other LiveCycle solution components to create groundbreaking customer engagement applications, visit the LiveCycle Data Services ES2 page.

The following outlines the new features in Flex 4.5 and 4.6.

Mobile application authoring support

Touch-enabled, optimized, and density-aware mobile components

• View, ViewNavigator, TabbedViewNavigator
• MobileApplication, ViewNavigatorApplication
• ViewMenu, ViewMenuItem
• Busy Cursor
• SkinnablePopUpContainer
• Scroller
• List
• ItemRenderer
• Button, CheckBox, RadioButton, ToggleButton
• TextArea, TextInput
• HSlider, VSlider
• ActionBar

Other mobile capabilities

• Kinetics and elastic bounce/pull effects for scrolling components
• Improved scrolling and transition performance optimizations
• Auto-scaling based on device pixel density
• Default mobile themes: light-on-dark color scheme for mobile component skins
• Native support for keyboard input
• Splash screen support
• Multiresolution bitmap support

New Spark components and capabilities

New components

Spark DataGrid

• Fully skinnable visuals
• Rich selection model
• Advanced column functionality
• Editable
• Fully accessible
• Better performing than MX counterpart

Spark form

• Fully skinnable
• Advanced layout

Spark image

• Fully skinnable
• Image-loading improvements (quality and performance)
• Extensible caching and queuing mechanism

Spark Module and ModuleLoader

Improved Spark capabilities

• Enhancements to BitmapImage Primitive
• Baseline alignment for horizontal layouts
• Addition of prompt support to Spark TextInput, TextArea, and ComboBox (desktop and mobile)
• Support for OSMF 1.0
• Support for TLF 2.0

Animations

• Transition Auto-Reversal
• Transition Interruption
• Improved animation of property value changes

Improved support for globalized applications

Native localization capabilities

• Globalized Validators (Number, Currency)
• Globalized Formatters (Currency, Number, Date/Time)
• Globalized Sort and SortField

Performance and application size optimizations

Compiler

• Performance and memory consumption improvements
• SWF file size analysis

RSL improvements

• RSL sharing among modules
• Removal of unused RSLs
• Avoidance of redundant RSL loading
• Monkey patching that now benefits from RSLs
• Refactoring of RSLs to trim SWF file size

Other

• Additional reference applications
• ASDoc improvements

You can download the Flash Builder 4.6 trial from the Flash Builder trial download page.

Flash Builder is a multiplatform product, enabling you to use the same serial number for both Windows and Mac OS. If you need either the Mac OS or Windows installer, you can visit the Adobe trial download center and download both installers. Simply enter your Flash Builder serial number when you run the installer.

Yes. The free Flex SDK provides a Java API that allows you to call the compiler directly from your code instead of needing to call the command-line tools. You may redistribute the free Flex SDK with your application provided you have signed a free redistribution agreement.

Visit the open source Flex SDK page to get all the details on the open source Flex SDK project.

A new SiteCatalyst Extension for Flash Builder is available. The SiteCatalyst Extension for Flash Builder enables developers to quickly and visually instrument tracking in their existing workflows. Developers can create and implement easy-to-use analytics libraries in their Flex applications. Learn more about the extension or download it now.