Easiest, free way to start with Flex?

Question

I'm interested in getting started with Flex, as I've wanted to work with flash for quite awhile but have never liked the designer-oriented way of programming. I've heard flex can be used for free, and is programmer friendly, but I'm having some issues... I can't find any good sites with flex resources. I'm used to PHP, so maybe I'm spoiled with a full manual, comments and tutorials, but I can't even find a decent tutorial site. So, what are some good flex starts to get started, and what's a good, free IDE to program with?

Answer 1

I don't know of a free IDE.

You can look at IntelliJ IDEA 9, and the Flex Builder (soon to be Flash Builder) plugin for Eclipse. Both have 30 day trials. For IDEA, the student and personal licenses are full featured, just not full price. For Flex Builder, standard edition is feature limited (no profiler, no advanced charting), but nothing you will miss unless you get serious about Flex development.

You can get the Flex SDK for free. This gives you the command line tools for building Flex app, either for the Flash Player or Adobe Air. Flex code itself is written in ActionScript and MXML (an XML format with embedded ActionScript). A good text editor that handles XML and ActionScript would be better than nothing.

You can find a tutorial on Adobe's web site. Honestly, though, you might do better with a good book from your favorite bookstore.

Answer 2

Here are a few good getting started resources:

• Tour de Flex
• First Steps in Flex Screencasts
• Flex in a Week