Appendix A. Introducing Flex 4

In a little more than a couple of years, through its evolution from its initial versions under Macromedia, Flex has emerged as a comprehensive framework and component library in its current form, version 3.3, under Adobe. As the framework has matured, so have the already superior Flash runtime, in which every Flex application runs, and the integration hooks, which make Flex work with popular server-side technologies such as Java, PHP, .NET, and Ruby.

Now this popular and successful framework, Flex, is going through a prominent transformation again, as it's getting ready for version 4. This concise write-up aims to illustrate these changes and explain them in a manner that is accessible not only to those who know Flex 3.x but even to those who are just scratching the surface as far as this topic goes. As I write this write-up on Flex 4, it still being baked in the oven. So, while I make every attempt to keep this write-up current and complete, I don't promise that it will be exhaustive. For those who thrive at the cutting edge, the last statement may not come as a surprise.