It’ll be interesting to see what FC actually looks like when it “hits the market”!

The reason to why I’m sceptical about writing MXML is that my experience is that there’s a risk of running in to trouble when trying to write more complicated code, in more complicated applications (such as ours quite often are)…
We’ve got a bunch of very skilled
AS developers, so I’m not convinced we would gain anything from writing the code in MXML instead? I’m not saying we can’t use it, but we just haven’t found any good reason to use it yet. Please convince me; I’m wide open to new ideas (just haven’t found anyone to convince me as of today)!

# Good to use Flash Catalyst – only for isolated components? Avoid using “states” in FC?

I think your comments are interesting. I think people will be able to customize FC for what they want. If you just want to do some components – it’s easy to do that. But I think the states will also help people.

# What are the capabilities of FXG? What’s the syntax like?

Is an XML syntax just like MXML. It basically aims to represent anything you can do in the CS tools. It’s not 100% yet, but you can apply some filters and blends using FXG syntax and change them on the fly.

# Does FXG “skin classes” (and likes thereof) be in MXML? Can regular AS classes be used instead?

I’m actually not sure about this, but I don’t think so. I think the skin classes are MXML/FXG only. But every MXML page is AS behind the scenes, so you may be able to do AS only skin classes.

# Can FXG code be imported to Flash Catalyst?

Yup!

# How can Flex and FXG be combined with regular AS classes?

Every Flex component is basically just AS under the hood. But instead of you having to write all of the AS for those components, we did it. FXG ends up being partly a representation of the low level drawing APIs in the Flash player.

So basically you can mix and match MXML and AS as you need to as long as you start with a Flex project.

=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com