Cristian Spiescu

Rich Internet Applications (RIA; the Flash platform & related tools/frameworks included) represent the future of software development. For websites, online software and enterprise software. That's why it is important, now more than ever, to focus on RIAs that are scalable, robust and reusable.

I believe that UML modeling techniques and proper tools help a lot ActionScript / Flex / Flash developers to have better and more scalable architecture, better and reusable code, better and more robust applications for small, medium and large AS projects.

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UML is a great object oriented modeling language that helps when working on small, medium or large projects, in small or large teams. Although ActionScript (AS) is a powerful object oriented programming language (which has got practically no learning curve for developers familiar with Java or C++), it was difficult to work with UML and AS without getting headaches. This will change with the release of UML4AS - UML for ActionScript and Flex.

UML4AS - UML for ActionScript and Flex is a "developer friendly" UML modeling tool that has bi-directional code synchronization support. Let me be more specific:
  • UML modeling tool - creates and manages class models and diagrams
  • bi-directional code synchronization - can generate and reverse engineer .as and .mxml files
  • developer friendly - is the whole philosophy behind UML4AS; UML4AS - UML for ActionScript and Flex is flexible and adapts to the existing development workflow. Among the many elements that make this possible I would enumerate the CodeSync technology (make simultaneous changes to the model and code, and synchronize without problems), tight integration within the IDE, etc.
I will soon be adding more articles about UML, ActionScript and Flex, and how they can be used together in a fun, easy and productive manner using UML4AS.

Meanwhile take a look at http://www.uml4as.com for more info.