Problem

In many large projects Flex applications are broken into sub-components to help manage size, loading, content updates, etc. The are multiple ways of breaking a project into sub-components such as using  Flex modules,  building sub-Flex applications that are loaded by the parent application, creating external ActionScript 3 only projects or they may be developed using Flash Professional.   The reason for this architectural decision is based on the nature of the project at hand and the experience of the team building the application.

In large projects, breaking the application into testable parts might be wise.  It also can allow for distributed teams participating in the development process to work together.  Also, if a project is animation and graphical rich, Flash Professional is likely the creation tool for those parts of the application.  To integrate these sub-components into the Flex application, they are most likely loaded via SWFLoaders.  Once loaded into the application domain, the assets can be controlled by the main application.  This is where problems can begin.

Since these sub-application and assets were tested outside of the main application conflict issues do not arise until all of the final pieces are integrated together.  One such problem is the dreaded runtime error “Property [property name] not found on [Class] and there is no default value.”

Most of the conferences we have attended tend to be along the 2-3 days long, SXSWi is an marathon conference with 5 full days of sessions, panels, keynotes and of course parties; lots of parties. This makes for a long, but exciting week/weekend.

Day four brought us beautiful weather for the first time at SXSW so far.  The sun was out and made our adventure to the BBQ Crash Course that much better.