MXML without the Flex framework
Tuesday 17 March 2009 - Filed under examples
This post might be a bit on the advanced side…
I was talking with Tyler earlier today and he brought up a neat little trick I hadn’t really thought of before: You can write MXML without the Flex framework. Of course you won’t get all the benefits of the Flex framework, but you’ll still be able to build out neat little MXML components with a little bit of work and, more importantly, you won’t have the ~130K of the Flex framework weighing down your app.
You’ll notice the size of the swf below is around 1K. 
Maybe if I get bored later this week I’ll write a demo Papervision3D app solely in MXML.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <root:ThisIsNotAUIComponent xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns:root="*"> <mx:Metadata> [SWF(width="900", height="480", backgroundColor="#ffffff")] </mx:Metadata> <!-- you won't have to do this children node garbage in Flex 4 --> <root:children> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> </root:RandomShape> </root:RandomShape> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> <root:RandomShape/> </root:children> </root:ThisIsNotAUIComponent> |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 | package { import flash.display.DisplayObject; import flash.display.Sprite; [DefaultProperty("children")] public class ThisIsNotAUIComponent extends Sprite { [ArrayElementType("ThisIsNotAUIComponent")] public function get children():Array { return null; } public function set children(value:Array):void { for each(var child:ThisIsNotAUIComponent in value) { addChild(child); } } } } |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 | package { import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter; public class RandomShape extends ThisIsNotAUIComponent { public function RandomShape() { var randomColor:Number = Math.random() * 0xffffff; var randomX:Number = Math.random() * 900; var randomY:Number = Math.random() * 480; graphics.beginFill(randomColor); graphics.drawRect(randomX - 150, randomY - 150, 150, 150); graphics.endFill(); filters = [new DropShadowFilter()]; } } } |
2009-03-17 » johnlindquist