Using Flex components in an FDT AS3 project without Flex Builder.

FDT is probably my most essential Actionscript development tool. I’ve just upgraded to FDT3 and found the following resources invaluable:

Complete starter guide for developing Flash projects using Eclipse/FDT

Beginners Guide to Getting Started with AS3 (Without Learning Flex)

To use the Flex component library in my AS3 project required one more step – making a basic mxml document that called my AS3 class upon Application initialisation. Here’s my mxml… . And here’s the AS3 application class (it creates a Button and a TextArea).

With these in place, compile the mxml to launch your application (I right-click on the mxml file and select ‘Run’). The SWF should launch with the grey ‘Flex background’ and create a Button and a TextArea component onscreen – No Flex Builder!