Playing with Flex 2 Beta 3
Had to download and install Flex 2 Beta 3 as soon as I heard about it. I like the new welcome screen, although I doubt I'll look at it any more than the last one. I thought it was interesting that they actually performed usability testing on this, and discovered that most people skipped it. That's what people DO with welcome screens, after all: skip them, and never return.
I quickly migrated some of my test projects over to the new beta, and compiled them. After a bit of fiddling, and referencing this page heavily, I was able to get them to work.
Some thoughts regarding the changes:
1) The StringBuilder class is gone, the reason given being that the performance gain it achieved was not enough to justify having two string manipulation classes. Now, I'm all for having a clean API. But I think I'd rather have the (mildly confusing) choice between two similar classes if it means I can have even slightly better performance.
2) Trace is back out of flash.utils, so now you can call it without importing the package. I think I liked it better in flash.utils. The point of putting it there in the first place was (I think) to put control in the hands of the developer. If I don't need it, why load it? Again, convenience be damned if it makes for even SLIGHTLY poorer performance. Plus, it just seemed at home in flash.utils, rather than floating about the ether as a global method.
Anyway, that's my first quick look at things. I will no doubt be posting more on the subject as I delve more deeply.
I quickly migrated some of my test projects over to the new beta, and compiled them. After a bit of fiddling, and referencing this page heavily, I was able to get them to work.
Some thoughts regarding the changes:
1) The StringBuilder class is gone, the reason given being that the performance gain it achieved was not enough to justify having two string manipulation classes. Now, I'm all for having a clean API. But I think I'd rather have the (mildly confusing) choice between two similar classes if it means I can have even slightly better performance.
2) Trace is back out of flash.utils, so now you can call it without importing the package. I think I liked it better in flash.utils. The point of putting it there in the first place was (I think) to put control in the hands of the developer. If I don't need it, why load it? Again, convenience be damned if it makes for even SLIGHTLY poorer performance. Plus, it just seemed at home in flash.utils, rather than floating about the ether as a global method.
Anyway, that's my first quick look at things. I will no doubt be posting more on the subject as I delve more deeply.
posted by tom at 8:09 PM
1 Comments:
FWIW, the trace function (and any other function or class) will be stripped out by the compiler if you don't use it.
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