Developing Flex 4 Components

7 Working with Metadata 125 What Is Metadata? 125 How Do I Use Metadata? 126 Working with Metadata 128 Exposing Information About Your Component 128 Describing Events 131 Exposing Styles and Effects 132 Embedding Assets 133 Binding Data 134 Setting Defaults 135 Working with Skins 137 Excluding Component Attributes 138 Altering and Deprecating Properties and Classes 139 Providing an Icon 140 And the Rest 140 Metadata in MXML 140 Creating Your Own Metadata Tags 141 Are Metadata Tags Classes? 141 Summary 145 Chapter 8 Events and Event Handling 147 Why Events? 147 Subscribers Versus Watchers 147 Asynchronicity 148 Event Flow 148 Dispatching Events 150 Adding Event Listeners 152 Custom Events 152 Extending the Event Class 153 Cloning Events 154 Dealing with Event Priority 155 Event Priority Constants 155 Countering Events 156 Event Propagation 157 Prevent Defaults 158 Summary 159 Chapter 9 Manipulating Data 161 Defining Component Data 161 Data Providers 161 KISS 162 Managing Data 163 Collections 165 Displaying Data 177 Data Renderers 177 Rendering the UI 178 Linking itemRenders to External Data 178 Summary 185 Chapter 10 Skinning and Styling 187 Spark Versus Halo 187 Spark Skin Life Cycle 187 Where Do I Start? 189 Working with SkinnableComponent 189 partAdded(), partRemoved() 189 getCurrentSkinState() 192 Creating Component Skins 193 FXG and MXMLG 194 Creating a Component Skin 194 Drawing Nonlinear Content 198 Spark Skins and Halo Components 200 Working with Properties and Styles 202 Using CSS 202 Custom Namespaces 202 Descendant Selectors 203 ID Selectors 204 Pseudo Selectors 204 Summary 205 Chapter 11 Creating Flex Components with Flash Professional CS5 207 Picking a Starting Point 207 Starting with Flash Professional 207 Starting with Flash Builder 4 209 Implementing States 212 Implementing Transitions 213 Controlling Component Resizing 215 Bounding Boxes 216 External Manipulation 216 Creating Component Visual Assets 218 Putting It All Together 219 Adding the Transition Animations 220 Properties and Methods 220 Metadata 221 Events 222 Externalizing Component Classes 223 Container Components 226 Summary 227 PART III: DISTRIBUTION Chapter 12 The Flex Library Project 231 Packaging Your Component 231 SWC Format 231 library.swf 232 catalog.xml 232 Locale 233 Assets 234 Working with the Flex Library Project 234 Creating a Flex Library Project 234 What If It All Goes Wrong 242 compc 242 Summary 243 Chapter 13 Component Integration in Flash Builder 4 245 Why Integrate with Flash Builder? 245 What Can I Integrate With? 246 Panel Integration 246 Design View Extensions 253 Live Previews 261 Setting Default Styles 262 Summary 263 Chapter 14 Documentation 265 Why Should I Document Code? 265 Last to the Party, First to Leave 265 Documentation Is Boring 266 My Code Is Easy to Read 266 OK I Get It, Enough Already 266 Commenting Your Code 266 Basic Comment Types 267 ASDoc Comment Blocks 267 ASDoc Tags 268 HTML Formatting 272 Special Characters 273 Metadata Comments 274 Documenting MXML 274 Bypassing Documentation 275 Generating Your Documentation 276 Command-Line Document Generation 276 Generating Documentation in Flash Builder 277 Getting to Grips with Ant 281 Summary 288 Appendix A Flex Resources 291 Blogs 291 Adobe Blogs 291 Independent Blogs 292 Resource Sites 292 Frameworks 293 Useful Tools and Extensions 293 Adobe Tools 294 Third-Party Tools 294 Logwatcher 294 Regular Expression Tools 294 Index 295