[UPDATE] A decision has been made and the Fx prefix is no more – http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b7e849

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I don’t like reposting Flex related news; however I’m please to see that Adobe have decided to revisit their original naming strategy for the new Flex 4 components.

There is a good discussion happening on their forums on Flex 3/4 component compatibility – the distinction between flex 3 and flex 4 components, namespace/naming conventions, and IDE/documentation/CSS implications.

It is a response to the community’s criticism of the whole “Fx” thing – naming the new Flex 4 components with a class prefix to distinguish them – such as “FxButton, “FxList”, etc.

Most developers seem to agree that separate namespaces for the halo and spark (gumbo) components would be most consistent and future proof and doesn’t further complicate usage considering that most developers already utilise additional namespaces for custom components and 3rd party libraries.

The general consensus seems to support three namespaces – the default for language specific elements – e.g. <Style>, <Script>), and two separate namespaces for the Flex 3 and Flex 4 components ( e.g. – <mx:Button> and <fx:Button>)

I have to agree that this solution is preferable over the original “Fx” class name prefix strategy. A key concern/priority for Adobe seems to be minimizing the complexity of the initial learning curve for new Flex developers (part of their reasoning behind choosing class prefixes over additional namespaces).

I agree with this concern, but believe that due to the overlapping functionality within the two component sets, any proposed solution is going to increase this complexity but at least the latter provides a consistent usage of xml namespace that existing flex developers will understand immediately, and new developers will appreciate in time.
Adobe is due to finalise their decision soon, and the discussion is ongoing.

Forum discussion here:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.59b7cdf0

Original Post here:
http://davidzuckerman.com/adobe/2009/02/10/help-us-decide-where-to-go-with-flex-4/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under actionscript, flex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.