A container defines a rectangular region of the Macromedia Flash Player drawing surface. Within a container, you define the components, both controls and containers, that you want to appear within the container. Components defined within a container are called children of the container.
At the root of a Macromedia Flex application is a single container, called the Application container, that represents the entire Flash Player drawing surface. This Application container holds all other containers, which can represent dialog boxes, panels, and forms.
A container has predefined rules to control the layout of its children, including sizing and positioning. Flex defines layout rules to simplify the design and implementation of rich Internet applications, while also providing enough flexibility to let you create a diverse set of applications.
One advantage of having predefined layout rules is that your users will soon grow accustomed to them. That is, by standardizing the rules of user interaction, your users will not have to think about how to navigate the application, but can instead concentrate on the content that the application offers.
Another advantage is that you do not have to spend time defining navigation and layout rules as part of the design process. Instead, you can concentrate on the information that you want to deliver, and the options that you want to provide for your users, and not worry about implementing all the details of user action and application response. In this way, Flex provides the structure that lets you quickly and easily develop an application with a rich set of features and interactions.
If you want a greater level of control over sizing and positioning, Flex provides the Canvas container. This container has no built-in layout rules, but lets you explicitly set the position and size of its children. For more information, see Canvas layout container.
Flex defines two types of containers:
Layout containers Control the sizing and positioning of the child controls and child containers defined within them. For example, a Grid layout container sizes and positions its children in a layout similar to an HTML table. For more information, see Using Layout Containers.
Navigator containers Control user movement, or navigation, among multiple child containers. The individual child containers, not the navigator, control the layout and positioning of their children. For example, an Accordion navigator container lets you construct a multipage form from multiple Form layout containers. For more information, see Using Navigator Containers.
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