There appears to be a bit of confusion about Flex-what it is, why you should use it-that is not part of any other Adobe product's public profile. There has to be a reason this smart, on-the-spot company brought it to market and continues to update it. Yes, it has to do with being rich, but no, it's not about money, and this is not an anti-capitalist screed.

Say what you want about your pet economic theories, but even a slightly free market allows for thousands of times the innovation of a controlled one. In short, Adobe designed Flex because they sensed a need and filled it. Flash developers and Web gurus of all kinds needed a leg up in developing the next generation of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which can be built to the "okay" level right in Flash but needed more to be "insanely great," as some black turtleneck-wearing guy likes to say.

So what is it?

At the most basic, a Flex application is a Flash .swf file that has been embedded in an HTML file. Flex outputs as .swf, which enables you to take advantage of all the features of the Flash Player-sound and video management, the drawing API, dynamic animations and more. The HTML that Flex generates has the JavaScript needed to determine if users have Flash Player installed or need to add or update it.

Flex didn't zoom right into the stratosphere like Flash, but it has gradually become more popular for its use of ActionScript 3.0. Fact is, developers created AS3 apps in Flex even before AS3 was officially released to Flash developers. Once Flash made it into Adobe's Creative Studio 3 (CS3), AS3 became a standard, and it's what made "Flexing your Web muscles" more exciting, and more innovative.

So how do you create a Flex app?

Unlike other tools for video and animation (and even animated GIFs in the defunct ImageReady), the Flex workspace does not work with a Timeline. This is not a limiting factor, though, as Flex really is positioned for programmers rather than designers. Interestingly, it ends up "somewhere in the middle," as many other reviewers have noted, and the designer-slash-programmer job title is a more and more common one these days. When you start working with Flex, that's one of the first things you will notice.

Simply put, you "design" Flex apps by choosing pre-made graphic components like buttons, grids and boxes that you will recognize from Flash. These cookie-cutters are great, and so are the pre-made goodies, although some developer-designers will claim (correctly) that you can better control component size, if not functionality, by making your own. That said, they work dependably and are very customizable, so the real-world problems being imagined never really come up.

Arrangement and order

The user interface is simple and easy to use, and you simply arrange components "on stage" how you want them. You will use the Containers to align your components however you want. A simple example is the VBox, a Container that takes everything inside it and puts them in a vertical alignment, very handy when you're setting up forms. Then you customize your look with styles and skins, set up your CSS formats and finish up the "design" to move on to "development."

With graphics in place and the app looking how you want it, you're ready to put AS3 to work handling events, creating classes or importing functions to make the Flex application a doer, not just another pretty face. Your app will respond to the user input as well as its own generated events-and connect to ColdFusion and other Flex Data/Communication Services. Remember when you're deciding about whether or not to use Flex that its partnership with ColdFusion is heaven sent, a real blessing.

Now you are ready to present the Flex app to the client, the company, your boss or the world-or all of the above. Of course, if you haven't used Flex yet, this article was not a tutorial, but a review (and an overview). Try it out yourself. Adobe makes it easy with a 30-day trial period, fully functional. If it's a tool you need, you will know it soon enough, and it won't take you long to learn it if you're motivated. Give it a shot!