Hi, my name is François Faubert.

Macromedia have brought a lot more depth into Flash by adding pre-compiled components (or movie clips) to the software’s library. Mostly available only in the professional edition, these components make building application faster and easier.

One of the components I’ve played with it the Window object. It’s simple to understand and it’s possible to create a Window on the fly using ActionScript only. Let me put some emphasis on that. Within a few lines, I was able to program my way into a graphic application. We can all agree that’s the goal behind the general direction Macromedia is taking and to a certain extent they are succeeding in doing so.

However, other components are much harder to instantiate or create/call straight from ActionScript. The documentation on Live Docs is also somewhat deficient. I’ve tried a gazillion times to have the XML connector work when created dynamically but couldn’t make it work yet. The media playback was a bit easier to build with dynamic values, but as I write this, the Mp3 player on The Music Tank still has trouble opening .mp3 files consistently.

What I hate about components is how I never know if it’s my fault if it’s not working. If it is (which is probably the case) there are two questions I can rarely find answers for:

• Am I supplying invalid values which failed validation once the control is speaking with my website? And
• Is the control not working because I instantiated its properties with wrong values?

I hope Flex will make it easier for graphic artists who are able to do real Object-Oriented programming. Right now, I feel pretty dumb having to use illogical code just to make up for Flash’s “almost-there” programming language.