Adobe launches the Flex 2 product line tomorrow along with Flash Player 9. Flex is a web web development environment used by programmers to build rich web applications that can make use of Flash and/or Ajax. The main advantage of Flex is that it makes developing Flash applications a lot easier, and easily combining it with Javascript to make full feature-rich web applications. Many development suites have made claims in the past to ease the development process with rich web applications, but most developers still stick to using just text editors and Javascript libraries as the simple approach offers most flexibility.
Flex seems to be on the right track, offering a powerful environment that will allow the developer to build either Flash applications, and in the future, full Ajax applications. The IDE is based on Eclipse, which is already very popular and is open source. Flex adds support for syntax completion, an integrated compiler and a realtime debugger that will save a lot of the common pain with debugging web applications.
Adobe has a new pricing mechanism for the Flex platform, but the basic Flex SDK is now free. There are many different options in this space, the most popular being the open source web application development environment OpenLaszlo. With what is already a great feature set and the ability to work well with other Adobe applications I am sure that Flex will be a hit with wep application developers who would like to build cool apps, but who don’t have the patience to learn the finer details of ActionScript and Javascript. Adobe have listed a large number of sample applications that were built using Flex on their website, and also have a large number of developer resources.
Bill McCoy, GM of Adobe’s ePublishing Business, has an overview of the announcement on his blog. Adobe also launched Flex.org yesterday, a new resource for Flex developers.
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Yep, sounds great, BUT needs Flex DS instaled on the server. So forget it if you don’t have your own server.
Pierre,
I think you might have missed the point because Flex would be great for enterprise users. They’d pay to be able to get support and peace of mind, especially to a trusted brand like Adobe. It’s not necessarily for everyone.
Justin
Pierre,
Flex does not need anything on the server. You can use it with or without your own server.
Regards,
David
Adobe
It will be interesting to see how adobe handles support now that they have all the macromedia products to handle. I am quite dissapointed in the support they provided for adobe premier. The answers I finally received said to upgrage to the newer version, which of course, the upgrade to premier elements would not import existing created projects, so they wanted me to upgrade to the pro version which was like $600. Adobe’s support forums are a very long read, I can only imagine what it will be like with flex, flash, dreamweaver and all the others now.
I believe that server side app requirements like realpalyer and others may be sellable to a few, but massive use across the net I would not expect.
R.E. Pierre
You don’t need flex data services (DS) installed on your server or anything else for that matter. Anything that can serve up static content will do.
Flex is a logical progression for the Flash ‘platform’, in that it allows modular pages to be described using an XML-based markup language. But, as with most Macromedia products, the quality is _not_quite_100%. The strength of Flex is that it lets you put things together quickly. It does not, however, let you create a high-quality application. If you have very specific designs and behaviours that you wish to implement, you will have to get your hands very, very dirty in order to get any value from the Flex platform. When attempting the simple task of programatically reskinning a button control, for example, I found myself deep inside the source code of Adobe’s (dubiously constructed) Button class before it became clear which convoluted steps had to be taken to achieve this seemingly straightforward task.
The code that you end up with when you use Flex as described in the manual looks like bad HTML, with Actionscript distributed inline throughout the code, and view-level information interspersed with controller code (e.g. width and height attributes on controls, etc…). It is difficult to construct an application that has any particularly meaningful separation of view from controller, as the MXML markup always requires a ‘view’ as an entry point to your application. ‘CSS’ files can be created, but don’t expect the functionality you’re used to when working in HTML - you get a minimal set of ’standard’ css selectors, and a lot of flex-specific weird-looking ones- it really should not be called CSS.
The AJAX support seems very much bolted-on at the last minute.
What you get left with after you have compiled your flex application is usually just an overblown flash file, with all the same issues as any flash application, which means that without a _lot_ of extra work, users can’t search, can’t change the font size, use find-in-page, can’t do most of the things they’ve got used to doing on web pages.
If this product was done _properly_, it would be great, but if you want to develop a serious application, and if it has to be in Flash, you’re still better off just writing Actionscript.
If Adobe spent a little more time developing their products, and a little less time _marketing_ them (yes, that includes searching the internet finding blog entries about your products and posting in the comments boxes), then they’d have something great. I reckon we’ll soon see a better third party eclipse plugin that achieves what Flex attempts, and does it properly.
Pierre: Mmmm… up until Flex 1.5 u did need something installed on the server, a java server. So there.
Like Michael said, it uses an extension of XML, called MXML. And yes, VERY VERY DIRTY HANDS…
I got into flex when it wasn’t even released for version 1, and altho I can see it as a good buy for enterprises, an average developer wouldn’t take much advantage of it.
Plus, I’m still hoping for it to connect with .Net
I’ve been working with Flex for a few months now. While it definitely has room to grow, I was able to create a pretty impressive UI on a full-blown application.
I find this quote interesting: “…and in the future, full Ajax applications…” —
IMHO, if you’re writing with Flex, you don’t need Ajax. Ajax provides a rich UI, but a well-done Flash UI is tough to beat. It’s easy to call web services from ActionScript, so why bother with Ajax? Don’t get me wrong, javascript is still needed, but you can do without Ajax.
Hi guys and thanks for your answers to my comment.
I tried to give a try to Flex a few months ago and then I think I needed something instaled on the server. Not anymore that’s a good new and I think Adobe should communicate more clearly on that because I reviewed quickly their webpage before my 1st comment and that information didn’t poped up to my eyes…
Adobe has been doing great things lately.
Looking forward to seeing flex released tommorrow and see what they’ve done with it =).
Mike, I think you may have missed the point of Flex a little. While it does contain many components which make it easier to developer with (built in components such as an accordion etc), to work with Flex properly requires a good understand of Actionscript.
Flex is effectively Flash for programmers / developers.
Michael, I disagree, I’ve been using flex since alpha and yes at the start it was difficult to get around but now with this final release much nicer.
Contrary to what you state MVC is inherently trivial in Flex 2.0, It’s complete OOP what more ,and how much more separation could you require? Separate to your hearts content.
CSS why would you need it except for styling in flex, you have constraint based layouts, view states etc.. The CSS implementation in Flex is only a small subset because you don’t require it.
This statement is simply not true “It does not, however, let you create a high-quality application.”
Re-skinning a button is like 4 lines of code.
What s wrong with having a view as an entry point to your app? With AJAX your required to have a view as well (index.html anyone). Unless you’ve figured out how to run JavaScript without a html page?
Ajax and Flex are 2 different beasts. IMHO Flex beats it down a far as large applications go. Ajax is difficult to maintain in a serious enterprise app. Flex and flash are growing up, they are no longer toy’s. They are indeed serious developer tools.
Steve: my understanding from a meeting with an Adobe representative was that Flex was developed with _Java_ developers as a system for creating enterprise intranets with rich application functionality, running in the Flash plugin (as opposed to more flakey platforms such as JInitiator).
Jason - my key problem is that Flex is designed for _speed_, not for _quality_. My job is realising pixel-perfect designs in user-experience driven (not technology-driven) applications. Using Flex for this task is counterproductive.
I agree that Actionscript has reached a level of maturity unappreciated by laymen - people still say things to me like “Flash is just like Visual Basic really, isn’t it?”. I have not been near the Flash IDE (unless I am working on a legacy project) for months now - I write everything in eclipse and build with ant scripts. This approach is not by Macromedia/Adobe’s design, but due to the open source community and third-party companies.
Just as I would not use the Design View in Dreamweaver to create a standards-compliant, accessible HTML/CSS website, I would not use Flex to create a powerful Flash application. The trouble is, with all the marketing Adobe are doing around this product, clients are asking for Flex, so I have to be able to work with it.
I expected, at the minimum, a .NET style page / code-behind level of separation between MXML and Actionscript. It’s just about possible in Flex, but I wish it was designed with a bit more experience of other technologies behind it. Writing a Flex application I feel like I’ve gone back to classic ASP. Adobe need to pay attention to the HTML community and the various other web app development platforms or they’ll always seem to be a step behind.
Excellent points, Michael - I have yet to get my hands dirty with Flex, due to some constraints at my current company, but with the little exposure I’ve had, it seems like it’s definitely not for everyone.
The ability to make some small, functional apps in a short time frame is enticing, however.
WAIT!
So Flash player 9 will be realeased… and yet no one notices.
Will flash palyer 9 come with a new Macromeia Flash?
Or is it only for Flex 2
It seems as if flash 9 is only being mentioned as a sidenote… there is no announcement on the site (just a sidenote) and nothing syas what is new…. so is there anything really new, or is it just there for flex!
Could someone help me out here?
flex has been out for sth like two months, since it’s alpha release. remember adobe flex ads on techcrunch homepage? but flash player 9 went out yesterday, if i am not mistaken. I have no ideas if the release was “exclusively because of flex” but i do not think so because as i said flex had been out for 2 months and it would be stupid of adobe to upgrade flash player only because newer version of IDE is released. I think player 9 is just new version, (with small differences to previous one) but do agree that there is nothing on download page about whats new. btw, to download go here: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave.....kwaveFlash
Flash Player 9 was released with a new ActionScript Virtual Machine was refer to as AVM+. It works aside the old one, but is 2 years in the making and bad ass. It uses a JIT (Just In Time Compiler) to convert ActionScript bytecode to machine code to run ultra-fast, faster than JavaScript. Additionally, it has a a new DisplayList feature, de-coupling display with View creation. Finally, it has ActionScript 3 with E4X (ECMAScript for XML) that is ECMAScript 4 compliant. ActionScript 3 is a lot like Java basically, with strong typing, runtime exceptions in the debug player, and a nice built-in event system (… as well as Binary Sockets, yum!).
More info here.
mxmlc is the (FREE) standalone compiler for compiling MXML and/or ActionScript, CSS, and other assets into SWF files.
Flex applications were (and some still are) targetted at the Enterprise world. Enterprise applications are large in scope, and it was obvious Flash Player 7 and 8 weren’t cutting it. Flash Player 9 is 10x times faster, has extremely better memory management, and slight improvements to the new Garbage Collector added in Flash Player 8.
Flex apps now launch faster than some web pages I’ve seen.
Flex Builder 2 is created so traditional web developers and programmers have a familiar paradigm for developing; Eclipse. Flash was too hard; most programmers would go, “WTF is this timeline for?”.
Flex Framework 2 (FREE) is the component framework that you usually use. It has buttons, checkboxes, containers, and various other controls and utility classes for creating applications. It has a ton of data service classes for connecting to simple GET/POST back-ends, WebServices, SOAP, and Flash Remoting. It still supports all the old Flash stuff like XMLSockets, and Flash Communication Server.
Flex Charting are extremely nice charts. I hate charts, but some people love ‘em (Google Finance anyone (done in Flash)) and I know the guys who worked on ‘em worked really hard.
Flex Data Services is the new and improved Flex Server with built in proxying (gets around Flash Player’s security sandbox [cross domain]), blacklisting & whitelisting of services, Java class mapping, and real-time connectivity via data push (via sockets). It even maps with Java’s Hiberate!
Get the straight dope from Mike Anders.
Flash Player 9 is a new version of Flash Player that supports Flex 2. The main new feature is the high-performance JIT interpreter/compiler for ActionScript 3. There is no corresponding new release of the Flash authoring IDE, this will presumably come at a later date. Flash Player 9 is entirely compatible with Flash 8, as well as all previous versions of Flash.
Michael, I agree that it is possible to write bad ASP-like code in Flex, particularly if you are new to Flex and/or programming. Serious programmers should look into the Cairngorm application framework and check out the other best-practices material on the adobe website. There are already a number of top-tier financial services companies that are using Flex to create applications; I believe they share your concerns about user experience and enterprise-grade quality, and have so far found Flex meets their standards.
Flash Ajax Javascript and PHP can speak together easily. An example: a strat page with news, Rss, podcasts, meteo, Flickr, videos YouTube…
http://mirpod.com/webpi.php?lang=en
Getting Flex to speak to .Net is not as hard as they say, the best integration I’ve managed to create so far is dealing .Net DataSets back and forth between a webservice and a Flex Application.
The backside is that I had to implement DataSets in Flex (and some other stuff, mostly UI-bindings).
Other than that I can”t say I’ve had any issues with integration to .Net.
Some sort of SharedObject might be nice, but sending DataSets makes data handling a breeze.
Erik / flexforum.org
FLEX is designed to LOCK YOU INTO FLASH! It’s a textbook case of vendor lock-in. FLEX will never support DHTML. It will never support SVG. It will never support Avalon. It is specifically designed to tie you into Flash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
On the other hand, OpenLaszlo was designed from day one to be independent of Flash, to support multiple runtimes, to enable you to write your application once and port it to different platforms. The new version of OpenLaszlo in development now supports DHTML, which enables you to compile the same OpenLaszlo program for Flash or DHTML, without any modifications.
Check out the LzPIX application running identically on Flash and DHTML, and take a look at the source code:
http://www.OpenLaszlo.org
What is OpenLaszlo, and what is it good for?
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/124
-Don
Don,
It’s in any company’s interest to want its customers to continue to use their product, yet I’d hardly call this vendor lock-in. The Flex Framework is free, and you can choose to use it or not. If you decide you no longer want to use Flex, the only resource you’ve lost is the time you’ve spent on it. That’s exactly the same situation you’d be in if you chose AJAX or OpenLaszlo. Also, it should be obvious to the person choosing to use Flex that it requires the Flash player. There’s no marketing or indication that it should ever support another platform. You’re just stating the obvious.
One more thing, Flex actually has some support for SVG. You have to import it at compile time, but you’ll be able to use the vectors within your application. Adobe seems to like this format, so I’d expect enhanced support in the future.
Flex is a no brainer. It’s got a free SDK (we have it hooked into Xcode) and make sit easy to go cross platform. We’ve used it to build http://www.mapwing.com, which makes it easy for anyone to turn their digital photos and maps into virtual tours then shares these.
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