Part 3. The finishing touches

Technically, by the end of part 2 you have what you need to make full-fledged Flex applications. Part 3 takes you beyond making vanilla applications and shows you how to create customized experiences.

For starters, you not only have stylesheets that are similar to HTML’s CSS, but also the ability to create themes that package a complete look and feel for a Flex application, including skins that transform the look of any Flex component.

In this part of the book, you’ll learn how to add pizzazz with jaw-dropping effects that will wow your users. Enabling these effects is ridiculously simple but has a powerful impact.

It’s all about the experience. Although it has a major cool factor, you’ll leverage Flex’s drag-and-drop feature to add usability to your applications.

Last but not least in the coolness bag, you’ll have management eating from the palm of your hand when you give them a dose of Flex’s charting abilities, which let you visualize data in a variety of ways.

As part 3 wraps up, your Flex projects are near the end of their development lifecycle. This is the point at which you’ll learn how to test, debug, and prepare your applications for prime time.