8.8. Summary

In this chapter, I described the nature of Flex controls and the details of some of the most useful controls in the Flex framework. You learned the following:

• Flex visual components consist of containers and controls.

• A container is a visual component that contains other objects.

• A visual control presents information to the user and can also be interactive.

• Controls can be used for application layout, to display data, and to collect data from the user.

• The new Spark components include these text controls: Label, RichText, RichEditableText, TextInput, and TextArea.

• Layout controls include HRule, VRule, and Spacer.

• Button controls include Button, CheckBox, RadioButton, and PopupButton.

• Other data entry controls include NumericStepper, DateField, DateChooser, and ColorPicker.

• Other interactive controls include HScrollBar, VScrollBar, HSlider, and VSlider.

• The MX Image control displays images that are loaded at runtime or embedded in the Flex application.

• The Spark BitmapImage control is a lighter weight primitive (rather than a complete component) that only works with embedded images.