San Diego Flash Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

To start 2009 off I gave my first presentation to an awesome group of Flash and Flex developers in San Diego. The presentation was created from the two articles I wrote in 2008 for the Adobe Developer Connection on Best Practices for Flex development. I’ve kept the Powerpoint presentation offline until now. Some of the content is a little dated but it’s probably still worth checking out. I may update this presentation with everything I’ve learned over the last year and for the upcoming changes coming in Flex 4, if time permits.

Download the Flex Best Practices Powerpoint Presentation here.

Java Programming II at UCSD

After wanting to learn more about Java for many years I decided to go back to school and take a structured class. This was the first time I’d set foot in a classroom since about 1998. It was through the UCSD Extension program but classes were held on the UCSD campus. It was pretty cool to walk around the campus and see the “college” life again after so long. In addition this was the first time I’d ever taken a class at a University, my previous college experience was at a community college. The instructor Kent Yang was really awesome and the class was killer! I learned a lot more about Java, OOP, Unit Testing and Design Patterns. This knowledge was all transferable into AS3/Flex so the experience was well worth the time and investment.

Check out the class details here.

The Flex Show Episode 71: OOP w/ Sean Moore

The Flex Show is awesome, simply stated. Jeffry Houser has done an excellent job with the podcast and I’ve been a fan for a few years now. One of my goals was to be a guest on The Flex Show and in 2009 in became a reality. I was able to put together a talk about OOP in regards to Flex and ActionScript development. The Java class helped solidify my knowledge of OOP so hopefully the talk will help others grasp some of the fundamental OO concepts. It was an honor to be on the show and I really appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully I can do another show sometime in the future. Maybe on the Mindset BCI work I’ve been doing lately.

You can listen to my talk on The Flex Show here.

Orange County Flex Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

Laura Arguello was kind enough to invite me to give my Flex Best Practices preso at the OCFlex Users Group in March. This gave me a chance to visit the ASFusion office before the preso and hang out with Jeremy Saenz (aka The Flex Gangster) a bit as well. The crowd at OCFlex was really great and very patient as I got set up and had some trouble finding a room at the venue big enough for everyone. Thanks again to ASFusion and the OCFlex Users Group for inviting me to present. It was a great experience!

Technical Authoring for O’Reilly InsideRIA

2008 was a big year for me and authoring. I wrote articles for Adobe, Flash Magazine and O’Reilly’s InsideRIA. I continued the trend in 2009 by writing three featured articles for InsideRIA. Rich Tretola is one of the coolest guys I know and such a pleasure to work with. He helped me a ton with the articles I wrote this year through the good and the bad. Another person I really have to thank is Matt Chotin. His feedback on my Flex 4 article was a huge help and I really appreciate his time and input! You can check out the articles I wrote for InsideRIA below:

Round up of ActionScript 3.0 and Flex optimization techniques and practices

Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo)

Decorator Design Pattern

Technical Reviews for Manning Publications

Reviewing books is great for a lot of reasons, it helps your writing skills, you get a preview of the books before they’re published and you get to contribute to the quality of the books being published. I do the reviews on a volunteer basis and really enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to do so. In 2009 I had the privilege of reviewing three books for Manning. They are all great titles and I encourage you to check them out.

Hello! Flex 4

Flex On Java

Flex 4 In Action

Present.ly AIR Client Development

This is one of the larger apps that I worked on completely by myself. Dave at Intridea got in touch with a request to help them refactor an existing AIR application to best practices. This project was one of the best projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. The app was cool, the concept was cool and the client was cool. The Present.ly service is a private Twitter like service for businesses, if you haven’t already taken a minute to check it out I encourage you to do so. Another really awesome aspect of this project is that the codebase for the AIR app is totally open source and available for download on GIT Hub. I was able to use Cairngorm and Flex Unit on this project which I feel really helped the codebase and application’s stability and scalability. You can check out the codebase and the finished app by following the links below:

Present.ly AIR source code at GIT Hub

Present.ly AIR Client

Game Consulting and Development

A game development company contacted me for some assistence with consulting and development for a Flex and Flash based game. This was my first experience doing any game dev and it was really great. This was another awesome client. They are not public yet so there aren’t any links to share. I did want to note that game development is something that I’d like to do more of and hopefully 2010 will present more opportunities to do so.

Parsley

Learning Parsley was been on my radar for quite some time. I’ve been able to work with the framework quite a bit over the last few months and really like it so far. It’s quite a bit different than Cairngorm development but it offers more flexibility and is the preferred direction by many developers. IoC frameworks are all the rage and I am glad to be learning how to use them.

Presentation Model

This design pattern is great. It enables better unit testing for your applications and helps to decouple logic from views. Using the Presentation Model wasn’t totally clear at first but after working with it for a while I’m really beginning to like it. Having a bunch of code in MXML files wasn’t really ever all that appealing to me and using the Presentation Model really helps to separate this code out into pure AS3 classes.

ThinkGear Brain Computer Interface API

In an effort to end 2009 with a bang I released my ThinkGear API. This API enables the Neurosky Mindset Brain Computer Interface to communicate with AS3 based applications. So far I’ve been able to build a rough dashboard that uses my brainwaves as its data source. In addition I was able to tie my brainwaves into some AS3 based particle visualizations. You can see my demo video and learn more here. Control ActionScript with your mind!!!

Well here’s looking to 2010. I can’t believe it’s already been a decade since Y2K. It’s been a great decade for the Flash Platform we’ve all come a long way.

This was a great project to work on and the people at Intridea were just awesome to work with. They allowed me to do the development without any distraction or micro-management. The application already existed when they got in touch but they wanted to change a few things and also update the codebase to a more standards based approach since the app is open source. The codebase now uses Cairngorm and Flex Unit and is also fully commented for ASDoc. It also used Degrafa for some of the view. I’d really like to thank Dave at Intridea for the opportunity to work together, it was a great experience and I really enjoyed working on the application.

You can visit the page for the AIR client here. The app is available for download and you can also browse or download the source code from github.

Intridea also has several other applications for the Present.ly service including a really cool web based application, an iPhone app and an Android app to name a few.

Take a minute to check out the Present.ly service. It was mentioned as Best-Bet Collaboration Tool by Inc. Magazine and also won an WebWare 100 Editor’s Choice Award. Intridea is a pretty cool company doing some exciting things!! You can sign up for the Present.ly service here.

So as a disclaimer I’ll have to say that I do not advocate stealing another businesses or developers work. Businesses spend considerable amounts of money to conceptualize and build breathtaking applications. Developers spend countless hours coding, debugging and testing and many times they become attached to the codebase. It’s unethical at best to steal from another business or developer. Just don’t do it, ok?

In the world of software development and specifically web development decompilation is however unavoidable. If you develop an application you should always be prepared for the chance that it could be reverse engineered. It may not be ethical but it is always a possibility.

Now with all of that out of the way lets take a look at an awesome application that can be used to decompile and reassemble SWF files. Trillix is very, very impressive. I’ve used a few different decompilation utilities over the years when FLAs corrupted on me or were misplaced. Trillix stands up to the competition. Some of the features and functionality are, well, amazing.

The code decompilation is pretty good. You can customize the syntax coloring which is cool. The real power of Trillix is its ability to convert an SWF back into an FLA. I only converted a few simple SWFs back to FLA but the results were stunning. The FLAs that get reassembled appear to be pretty usable and intact. This functionality would be a life saver if you lost an FLA or had one corrupt on you. Another great use for Trillix would be if a client didn’t have the FLA and came to you with change requests for their application. Trillix also had sophisticated funtionality to extract resources from SWFs including graphics, audio and MovieClips. Trillix can also convert SWFs to EXE projectors. Another powerful feature is the ability to edit the internal assets of an SWF and then save out an updated version of the SWF.

Other than the ability to decompile AS3 source there may not be a ton of functionality for Flex developers. I’d highly recommend Trillix to Flash developers though. The price of 80$ is definitely worth it to have a tool this powerful around. If you were ever in the need for a FLA recovery tool you’d be extremely relieved to own a copy of Trillix.

Cairngorm
Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development advocated by Adobe Consulting, encourages best-practice leverage of the underlying Flex framework, while making it easier for medium to large teams of software engineers deliver medium to large scale, mission-critical Rich Internet Applications.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm

Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/cairngorm/cairngorm2_2_1-bin.zip

Flex Unit
FlexUnit is a unit testing framework for Flex and ActionScript 3.0 applications and libraries. It mimics the functionality of JUnit, a Java unit testing framework, and comes with a graphical test runner.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexunit/FlexUnit

Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/flexunit/flexunit0_9.zip

Subclipse
Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. The software is released under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license.

http://subclipse.tigris.org/

Eclipse update site URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x

Eclipse
Eclipse is a multi-language software development platform comprising an IDE and a plug-in system to extend it. It is written primarily in Java and is used to develop applications in this language and, by means of the various plug-ins, in other languages as well – C, C++, COBOL, Python, Perl, PHP and more.

http://www.eclipse.org

Download: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

ASDoc
ASDoc is a command-line tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML pages from the classes in your Adobe® Flex® application. The Adobe Flex team uses the ASDoc tool to generate the Adobe Flex Language Reference.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_1.html

Flex Ant Tasks
The Adobe® Flex® Ant tasks provide a convenient way to build your Flex projects using an industry-standard build management tool. If you are already using Ant projects to build Flex applications, you can use the Flex Ant tasks to replace your exec or java commands that invoke the mxmlc and compc compilers. If you are not yet using Ant to build your Flex applications, you can take advantage of these custom tasks to quickly and easily set up complex build processes for your Flex applications.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_1.html

Installation: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_2.html#224215

Degrafa
Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework open source licensed under MIT.

http://www.degrafa.org

Download: http://www.degrafa.org/code/

as3corelib
The corelib project is an ActionScript 3 Library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3. These include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs.

http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/

Download: http://as3corelib.googlecode.com/files/as3corelib-.92.1.zip

Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices
Coding standards for writing open-source Flex framework components in ActionScript 3. Adhering to these standards makes the source code look consistent, well-organized, and professional.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Coding+Conventions

Flex Language Reference
The Flex 3.3 Language Reference provides syntax and usage information for every element in the ActionScript™ language. It documents all elements in Adobe® Flash® Player and Adobe® AIR™ that are officially supported by Adobe.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

List of 31 Flex APIs, Libraries, Components and Tools
http://seantheflashguy.com/blog/2007/08/21/list-of-31-flex-apis-libraries-components-and-tools/

List of 22 ActionScript 3.0 API’s
http://seantheflashguy.com/blog/2007/08/13/list-of-22-actionscript-30-apis/

ActionScript 3.0 APIs from Eric Feminella
ActionScript 3.0 APIs developed specifically for Adobe Flex and AIR.
http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/actionscript-3-apis/

ASMailer
The ASMailer class sends emails using an SMTP server. ASMailer sends mail without the need of a server side language like PHP or JSP.
http://asmailer.riaforge.org/

Away3d 2.1
Away3D is a realtime 3d engine for flash in ActionScript 3.0
http://away3d.com/away3d-21-demos-docs

Bullet Graph
A good way to show actual time spent vs. the estimated time for a project
http://agileui.blogspot.com/2008/05/bullet-graph-free-flex-component.html

Degrafa
Degrafa : Declarative Graphics Framework
http://www.degrafa.com/

Desuade Partigen
Desuade Partigen is an extension for Adobe Flash which lets you create realistic vector and raster particle effects (such as fire, smoke, sparkles), without requiring you to do any complex coding.
http://desuade.com/products/partigen/

EasyMVC
EasyMVC is an event driven MVC framework which focuses on flexibility while not getting in the developers way.
http://projects.simb.net/easyMVC/

Five3D
vector-based 3d rendering framework by Mathieu Badimon – has just received a significant update, bringing it to version 2.1. New features this version brings: Back Face Culling, Flat Shading, Z-sorting, Space Drawing functions, Bitmap3D class, Video3D class, Sprite2D Class, Letter Spacing, Text Width
http://five3d.mathieu-badimon.com/

Flash Player 10 API Documentation!
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_as3langref_052008.zip

Flex 3 Performance and Memory Profiling
“Memory profiling lets you look at objects being created, take snapshots and compare them. Performance profiling allows snapshots for looking at cumulative and internal time.”
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions:_Performance_and_Memory_Profiling

Flex 3 RSLs
Use Flex 3 runtime-shared-libraries (RSLs) to reduce the size of your applications and thereby reduce the time required to download the application. RSLs are just SWF files whose code is used as a shared library between different application SWF files.
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions:Flex_3_RSLs

Flex 4 States syntax changes
Flex 4 will target all of the legacy usage scenarios of classic Flex states functionality (stateful components, states as application “views” or “pages”, effects and transitions between view states, etc.). This document outlines what is primarily a syntax change for the existing functionality.
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Enhanced+States+Syntax

Flex and Flex Developers Magazine
http://www.ffdmag.com/

Flex “Designer Scroll Bars”
“designer scroll bars” – skinny little tone on tone scroll bars that have no scroll arrows
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2008/05/designer_scroll.html

FlexMDI
flexmdi is a robust, extensible Multiple Document Interface framework for Adobe Flex.
http://code.google.com/p/flexmdi/

Flex Resource Bundles
What’s a resource bundle? It’s a set of values that you externalize from your source code in a properties file. And it can be swapped out at compile time or, with Flex 3, at runtime. Think of it like a style sheet for values.
http://blog.extends.eventdispatcher.org/roger/introduction-to-flex-resource-bundles/

FOAM
FOAM is a two-dimensional rigid body physics engine written in ActionScript 3.0.
http://code.google.com/p/foam-as3/

Go3D
Cool Tweening Engine, the Go3D which give you more control over moving objects in 3d space.
http://code.google.com/p/goplayground/source/checkout

GoogleMap Flex Component
A new component for Flex Developers who want to add more control or be very well organized.
http://www.igorcosta.org/?p=140

Guttershark
Guttershark is an Actionscript 3 library that pushes some simple conventions on you, only to make you faster as a developer. It’s a pattern for Flash development that cuts out a huge amount of time, especially when you’re in the first stages of development.
http://www.guttershark.net/

ILOG Elixir
A suite of professional user interface controls that gives developers a rich collection of innovative and interactive data display components. It includes ready-to-use schedule displays, map displays, dials, gauges, 3D and radar charts, a treemap chart and organization charts.
http://www.ilog.com/products/ilogelixir/

LoadingImage
Takes a regular Flex Image component, and adds a self contained ProgressBar to it to show its own loading progress.
http://www.munkiihouse.com/?p=135

Logger Library and RIALogger
The Logger component provides classes to that abstract the Flex 2 Log and logging Target classes. It provides a simple approach to logging messages with category information and provide hooks into multiple targets. It supports the following logging targets by default: RIALoggerTarget, TraceTarget (trace()), XPanelTarget, and FlexTracePanelTarget. The LogController also provides functionality to allow you to setup your own custom logging Target.
http://renaun.com/blog/flex-components/rialogger/

Mate
Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework.
http://mate.asfusion.com/index.cfm

Merapi
Merapi is a new project that is a framework for connecting AIR to java at the desktop.
http://adamflater.blogspot.com/search/?q=merapi

MinimalComps: Minimal AS3 UI Component Set
CheckBox, PushButton, HSlider, VSlider, InputText, ProgressBar, RadioButton, ColorChooser (text input only) and Panel.
http://www.bit-101.com/minimalcomps/

OpenFlux
OpenFlux is an open-source Flex component framework which allows developers to create radically new and custom Flex components.
http://code.google.com/p/openflux/

PeekPanel
Cool way to hide options or preferences in an application. It borrows the look and feel from the FlexBook/PageFlip components already out there, but instead of simulating a book, this is more of a way to use the “flip” to hide other components.
http://www.billdwhite.com/wordpress/?p=29

PlexiGlass
http://www.bobjim.com/category/plexiglass/

Share (Document Services API)
Online service provided by Adobe that allows you to share, publish, and organize documents online.
http://code.google.com/p/as3sharelib/downloads/list

Slide
Slide is an application framework for projects built in Flex 2 or 3. Using familiar design patterns, Slide provides a robust MVC structure, view state management decoupled from view implementation and a flexible approach to model and controller access, eliminating need for singleton classes.
http://code.google.com/p/flex-slide/

Sandy 3.0.2
Sandy is an intuitive and user-friendly 3D open-source library.
http://www.flashsandy.org/versions/3.0

Sprouts
Sprouts is an open-source, cross-platform project generation and configuration tool for ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Adobe AIR and Flex projects.
http://www.projectsprouts.org/

Universal Mind Extensions for Adobe Cairngorm
Universal Mind has extended the “classic” Adobe 2.2.x Cairngorm version to provide many productivity and maintenance enhancements.
http://code.google.com/p/flexcairngorm/

Video Tutorial on Compiling for Flash Player 10
http://theflashblog.com/?p=383

Virtual Space (AS 3.0) V. 1.0
The Virtual Space is an AS3 component that can be used to create virtual-tour type visualizations very easily. Simply specify 6 images to be used for top, bottom, left, right, front, and back. Then, position the camera, set the initial view, and specify interaction parameters.
http://www.afcomponents.com/components/virtual_space_as3/

Here is a bit more information from Erin about these exciting opportunities:

“Adobe is looking for Flex and Actionscript developers; especially folks who are experts at building on top of platforms like the Flash Player, Flex, Flash Media Server, etc. Specific jobs can be found at:”

Here is the link that Erin sent along, you’ll need to search for the jobs mentioned in this blog post. (The Adobe job site is a great place to keep an eye on too, if you weren’t already.)

http://cooljobs.adobe.com/frameset.html

Here are the open positions and the technologies that you will be working on for each position.

Flash Authoring/ Flex Dev w/ a strong background in CS to work on the Media Platform.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/mediaplayer/

Flex UI Dev focus on real time communications:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/brio/

Flex UI Dev working on a v1.0 product, Share.com:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/share/

Full job descriptions are available in the following PDF downloads:

Flex Application Developer
Flex App Developer.pdf (47kb)

Senior Software Engineer, Connect
Sr. SWE Connect Brio.pdf (39kb)

Computer Scientist, Flash
Computer Scientist, Flash.pdf (40kb)

The other area she investigated was skinning the Flex 3 UI controls with video. This is something I haven’t seen in any Flex UI’s to date, Dolores is always up to something cool! She has really been digging into skinning Flex apps lately. Stop by her blog or get in touch directly to discuss bleeding-edge Flex 3 and AIR skinning requests. Dolores is also very interested in integrating 3D into Flex. Stay tuned for some 3D/Flex UI explorations from her in the future.

Other items that the group discussed were:

MVC Architectures
Cairngorm
Here are some other very useful resources for learning Caringorm
David Tucker’s Cairngorm Series (with training videos!!)
Jeffry Houser’s Learning Cairngorm Series
Here are alternative MVC frameworks for ActionScript development.
PureMVC
EasyMVC

ActionScript Decompilers
Sothink SWF Decompiler
I forgot to mention Flare
Also, here is some info on an ActionScript 3.0 Decomplier

A few other items that were covered:
Sprouts (an open-source, cross-platform project generation and configuration tool for ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Adobe AIR and Flex projects.)
Visual Flex Unit
Here is another GUI unit testing framework that might be of interest: RIATest

I am probably forgetting a couple things here as well….

One of the attendees demo’d a pretty cool AIR app that he put together for live audio mixing. I’ll try to get the link to his AIR app and post it soon.

I’m not sure what’s on the agenda for April yet but check the sdfug.org website for updates. At some point I am planning on doing a presentation on AIR. More on that later…

There are three classes available to monitor network connectivity for Adobe AIR applciations. These classes are:

ServiceMonitor
SocketMonitor
URLMonitor

This article uses a very simple code example to demonstrate the usage of the URLMonitor class.

To get started you will need to import the URLMonitor class. The URLMonitor class is located in the air.net package.

The next step is to create an initialization method. In this method an instance of the URLMonitor class is created and assigned to the local variable “urlMonitor”.

The URLMonitor constructor accepts an instance of the URLRequest class as an argument. A URLRequest instance named “urlRequest” is created and assigned a value of “http://seantheflexguy.com”. The URLRequest instance is passed into the URLMonitor constructor.

An event listener also needs to be created and registered with the URLMonitor instance. The “onStatusEvent” method is registered to listen for the StatusEvent.STATUS event of our URLMonitor instance.

Finally the “start” method MUST be called to activate the URLMonitor instance.

The “onStatusEvent” method will receive a StatusEvent event object as a parameter. This parameter will contain useful data related to the status of the targeted URLRequest. In particular the “code” property can be used to determine the network status. I was able to get the “Service.available” and the “Service.unavailable” values by disconnecting the RJ45 cable from my laptop with the AIR application running in debug mode in the Flex Builder 3.0 IDE. You can see the trace statements as they were displayed while I ran the app in the screen capture included with this article.

The URLMonitor class enables you to determine if the availability of a network resource is changing. Monitoring one single resource is not a reliable way of determining if application is truly “offline”. One idea toward creating a more reliable online detection script might be to check a collection of five highly visited websites. Then depending on the overall availability of those websites a solid online/offline assessment could be made. If you are looking to monitor a single network resource, such as your server, then the URLMonitor class can be used as-is.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. The next article in this series will explore the notification features of Adobe AIR.

Code Example:

<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
  layout="absolute"
  creationComplete="init();">
  <mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[
      import air.net.ServiceMonitor;
      import air.net.URLMonitor;

      private function init() : void
      {
        var urlMonitor : URLMonitor;
        var urlRequest : URLRequest = new URLRequest( "http://seantheflexguy.com" );
        urlMonitor = new URLMonitor( urlRequest );
        urlMonitor.addEventListener( StatusEvent.STATUS, onStatusEvent );
        urlMonitor.start();
      }
      private function onStatusEvent( event : StatusEvent ) : void
      {
        var evt : StatusEvent = event;
        trace( ">>onStatusEvent::evt.code=" + evt.code );
      }
    ]]>
  </mx:Script>
</mx:WindowedApplication>

Now, on to the free Flex books!!!

Congrats to Anand Vardhan for being the first one to send in the correct answer to the last book giveaway question.

“What are three components that can be used for accessing server-side data with Flex?”

The correct answer was:

• HTTPService
• RemoteObject
• WebService

More information about Accessing Server-Side Data with Flex can be found in the online Adobe Flex 3 Help.

Anand already had a copy of Programming Flex 2 and he was kind enough to pass the book on to the second place winner who was Nuno Rosa from Portugal. Congrats to Nuno, you’re copy of Programming Flex 2 has been sent off. Enjoy that book, it’s a great one!

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for… The free book.

This week I have a copy of Flex Solutions by Marco Casario. The book is published by Friends Of ED so you know it’s quality. This is a massive book that covers a TON of information for Flex 2 and Flex 3 developers.

Here is this weeks book giveaway question:

AIR provides an easy-to-use, cross-platform window API for creating native operating system windows using Flash, Flex, and HTML programming techniques. What are three classes used to create and work with windows in AIR?

The first person to email me with the correct answer will win the copy of Flex Solutions. Good luck!