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Flex technologies

Adobe® Flex™ 2 enables developers to create an entirely new class of rich Internet applications (RIAs) — because it is based on new and updated technologies that give developers more power during the development process to expand the richness of the applications they build. All of these technologies work together to create a more productive development experience and a richer, more engaging experience for end users.

Flash Player 9

Adobe Flash® Player 9 represents a major step forward from Flash Player 8. It's a completely rearchitected, enterprise-class client runtime that uses advanced vector graphics capable of handling the most demanding, data-intensive applications while performing at desktop application speeds. It includes a brand-new, highly optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) known as AVM2, which supports full runtime error reporting and industry-standard debugging. It includes binary socket support, allowing developers to extend the player to work with any binary protocol. Flash Player 9 is a more secure, reliable, cross-platform runtime, and Adobe Flex 2 takes advantage of these new features.

• Download Flash Player 9
• Learn more about Flash Player 9

MXML

MXML is the XML-based language that developers use to lay out components in Flex applications. It provides a declarative approach to controlling an application's visual appearance. Using MXML, developers can position components and specify constraints to enable a more "liquid" user interface. Developers can also use View States and Transitions to control how the application should respond to different user actions and application events.

ActionScript 3.0

ActionScript 3.0 is a powerful, object-oriented programming language that is ideally suited for rapidly building RIAs. Earlier versions of ActionScript offered the power and flexibility required to create truly engaging online experiences, but ActionScript 3.0 further advances the language, providing superb performance and ease of development to facilitate highly complex applications, large data sets, and object-oriented, reusable code bases. With ActionScript 3.0, developers can achieve excellent productivity and performance with Flex applications. ActionScript 3.0 is based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting, and is compliant with the ECMAScript language specification.

ActionScript 3.0 also introduces a new, highly optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine, AVM2, which dramatically exceeds the performance possible with AVM1. As a result, ActionScript 3.0 code executes up to ten times faster than legacy ActionScript code.

The new AVM2 virtual machine is available in Flash Player 9 and will be the primary virtual machine for ActionScript execution. AVM1 will continue to be supported by the Flash Player for backward compatibility with existing and legacy content.

• Download a free trial of Flex Builder™ 2
• Download the free Flex 2 SDK now