MXML

MXML (Macromedia FleX Markup Language) is an XML-based user interface markup language first introduced by Macromedia in March 2004, and acquired by Adobe Systems in December 2005. Application developers use MXML in combination with ActionScript to develop rich Internet applications, with products such as Apache Flex.

Usage

MXML is used mainly to declaratively lay out the interface of applications and can also be used to implement business logic and internet application behaviors. It can contain chunks of ActionScript code, either when creating the body of an event handler function, or with data binding where the curly braces ({) syntax is used.

MXML is often used with Flex Server, which dynamically compiles it into standard binary SWF files. However, the Adobe Flash Builder IDE (formerly Macromedia Flex Builder) and free Flex SDK can also compile MXML into SWF files without the use of a Flex Server.

There is also a PHP PEAR package called XML_MXML, which is a framework to build Adobe Flex applications.

MXML is considered a proprietary standard due to its tight integration with Adobe technologies. It is like XAML in this respect. No published translators exist for converting an MXML document to another user interface language such as UIML, XUL, XForms, XAML, or SVG. However, there do exist third party vendor plugins for Flex Builder that are capable of generating a result other than a SWF file from Flex applications, for instance native mobile applications.

Example source code

A Hello World example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" 
                layout="absolute" backgroundGradientColors="[#000011, #333333]">
   <mx:Label text="Hello World!" verticalCenter="0" horizontalCenter="0" fontSize="48" letterSpacing="1">
      <mx:filters>
         <mx:GlowFilter color="#ffffdd"/>
      </mx:filters>
   </mx:Label>
</mx:Application>

External links

• Compiling MXML and ActionScript source files for AIR at Adobe
• MXML at Apache Royale GitHub
• MXML at Wikipedia