Developing for Flash Player 10 in Flex Builder 3

By: Joseph Balderson

Page 1 of 3

As a Flex developer, keeping up with new advances in Flash Player 10 is essential. Thus, it's nice to be able to build to the latest Flash Player, without waiting for the next major release of Flex Builder. This article will show you how to get Flex Builder 3's code assist to recognize Flash Player 10 classes, and to compile for and check for the presence of the Flash 10 Player, without a lot of mucking about with configuration files.

The Problem of Upgrading Flex 3

When the Flash Player 10 beta was out, upgrading Flex Builder to be able to compile to the beta 10 player could be done, but it was a complex process not for the faint of heart. It required the manipulation of Flex Builder configuration files and the downloading of the Gumbo (Flex 4 alpha) SDK to grab a copy of the AS3/Flash API framework file that the compiler required.

The release of Flash Player 10, and the Flex 3.0.2 nightly build, gave developers more reason to start building to Flash 10, and documentation on opensource.adobe.com made this process a little less mysterious. But, manipulating Flex Builder's configuration files set Flash Player 10 as the default for all Flex projects. What if you want to compile some projects to Flash 9*, and some projects to Flash 10?

* since the browser penetration is around 97% as of this writing November 2008.

The release of the Flex SDK stable build version 3.2.0.3794 on October 23rd made this process much easier. It is an SDK version that's considered stable, and the framework folder structure not only allows for different player versions (which was introduced around SDK v.3.0.2), it also includes the Flash Player 10 playerglobal.swc file, so you don't need to grab it from the Gumbo SDK build.

In this article, you'll see how you can configure Flex Builder 3 to compile for Flash Player 10 using a v.3.2.x build of the Flex SDK, without needing to modify any configuration files.

Installing the Flex 3.2 SDK

First, you need to grab the latest stable version of the Flex SDK from the Flex 3 SDK Downloads page, which as of this writing is 3.2.3794.
Once you've done that, extract the files from the zip, and create a new SDK directory in your default SDKs directory in the Flex Builder installation.

Image 1: Creating the new SDK version folder.
In Flex Builder 3*, select Window > Preferences > Flex > Installed Flex SDKs.

Image 2: Installed SDK preferences page.

*We will be demonstrating this process using Flex Builder 3 standalone, although if you have installed the Flex Builder 3 plugin with Eclipse, the process will be much the same.
Click Add to add another SDk to the list.
Click Browse next to the Flex SDK location field. Copy and paste the path from your folder navigation bar* directly into the field so you don't have find the folder allover again.

Image 3: Browsing to the SDK folder.

*Although this tutorial shows how to do this in Windows, the process is much the same in OSX.
You might want to customize the Flex SDK name so that it gives you a little more information than simply "Flex 3.2", like perhaps "Flex 3.2.0.3794 (stable)".

Image 4: Giving the SDk a name.
Click OK. Now you will see the new SDK appear in the list.

Image 5: The newly installed SDK.
Select Apply and OK.
Now that you've installed the new SDK, you need to create a Flex project which will make use of the Flash Player 10 swc for this project.