10 Reasons We Love Flex 2

As the Adobe and Flash communities probably already know, Adobe's Flex platform was released recently. For the unfamiliar, Flex is a development environment that allows developers to build web applications replete with business rules, layout capabilities and other goodies that compile to Flash. The result can be a really compelling, rich end-user experience. We all know that AJAX gets all the buzz these days. We do plenty of AJAX work here at Arc90. But we’re also loving Flex 2. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. No More Browser Compliance Testing! One thing about AJAX, it’s more complicated than plain ol’ XHTML and some CSS. Browser compatibility testing goes from a bad dream to a nightmare. Since Flex apps compile to Flash SWF files, they are identical down to the pixel, no matter which browser or operating system you’re using.
2. E4X. Anyone who’s parsed XML knows the pain of parsers. Flex 2’s version of Actionscript includes Ecmascript for XML or E4X. It makes walking an XML object way easier by treating XML as a primitive. Take a look at these simple examples (deleted :( ). Sweet.
3. No More Interface Layout Pain. We’ve all been there. Anyone who’s committed to CSS for layout knows the pain in attempting to properly lay out those DIV tags. It’s painful. With the Flex markup language’s (MXML) container-based, it’s far simpler to lay out both fixed and liquid designs to predictable results.
4. Simple Field Validation. Anyone’s who’s built business or eCommerce applications has dealt with form field validation. Zip codes. Credit card numbers. They’re all built right in and very easy to use.
5. Rich Media Support. The Flash platform has absolutely blind-sided the previously dominant media players on the Web (Real, Windows Media). It is light and works without installing this or that. Flex makes it simple to embed both audio and video content right into your applications.
6. True Seperation of Presentation and Content. For years, developers have extolled the virtues of separating data from presentation. Of course, in the Web world, it’s far easier said than done. The great majority of web apps are templates wired to some form of dynamic content. With Flex, data is neatly drawn in from wherever (simple XML, SOAP, etc.) and bound to interface elements. This forces a more rigid separation. Your servers now just deliver content. When you’re done, you not only have an application, you have an API.
7. The Flex Development Environment. Any Javascript developer knows the pains of developing AJAX/JS applications. Debugging is tough and there really are no established visual development environments for AJAX/Javascript work. Flex Builder 2 (deleted :( ) is the Flex visual programming environment that has all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from industrial grade IDE’s like Visual Studio and JBuilder. It’s built on top of the Eclipse IDE platform.
8. CSS Survives! We’ve got some serious CSS talent here at Arc90 and we are psyched to see that many of the styling capabilities of Flex are still handled through CSS. Colors. Fonts. Gradients. Those CSS skills can still be applied to skin and customize your Flex applications. Take a look at the Flex Style Explorer (deleted :( ) to get a sense of Flex’s CSS capabilities.
9. Adobe Apollo. Who said we were just building web applications? Adobe’s got grander plans than your web browser and we’re already along for the ride. Adobe’s Apollo project brings these richer experiences right to the desktop. Apollo is still in development, but you can take a sneak peak at some early screenshots here (deleted :( ). You can learn more about Apollo here (deleted :( ).
10. It’s Cheap! Ok, it’s not as cheap as AJAX (which is technically free) but the support and developer tools available make it well worth the money. Flex used to be a server product that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 per CPU. Today, all you need to buy are the developer tools to get started (Flex Builder costs $499).

So there you have it. 10 reasons why we’re showing Flex love these days. We’ve been in lock-step with the Flex beta for over 8 months now and are developing some seriously powerful applications on Flex. We’ll hopefully be able to unwrap our work soon to share it with everyone.

Автор: Richard Ziade.

Написано Июль 6, 2006

Комментарии

Richard. Great article. Just wanted to point out that your link to the Flex Style Explorer links to the Flex 1.5 Style Explorer, and since you're extolling the virtues of Flex 2.0, you might want to link to the Flex 2 Style Explorer, which can be found here: *** (although Flash Player 9.0 is required for that version admittedly)
Posted on July 6, 2006 02:28 PM by Peter Baird

Oh, also, on your "It's Cheap" item, you should also mention that there is actually a free version of the SDK which allows you to create Flex apps from the command line completely free. So, given that your number 7 item mentions Flex Builder as an advantage over AJAX, if you compare the non-IDE version of Flex with Ajax ... a more apples-to-apples comparison on that front, it is as cheap as ajax... 100% free, nada, zippo, zilch.
Posted on July 6, 2006 02:32 PM by Peter Baird

Peter:
Thanks for the feedback. I'll incorporate soon.
Posted on July 6, 2006 03:28 PM by Rich Ziade

"Since Flex apps compile to Flash SWF files, they are identical down to the pixel, no matter which browser or operating system you’re using."
Tell that to someone running Linux. Especially a 64bit version or Linux on PPC. Sorry, AJAX is much more compatible than any flash based system. Until the day Adobe provides Flash 9 for 32 bit, 64 bit, and PPC based Linux, Flex will never be as browser compatible as AJAX.
And since we're on the subject, any chance we'll ever see a Flex Builder 2 for Linux?
Posted on July 6, 2006 03:39 PM by Jeff

There is one big problem with Flex 2 (and actually anything Flash-based). And if you do data processing/output rather than just animation this is the problem you can't ignore. The problem is: your web-"pages" created with Flex will not be indexed by search engines - so you are effectively invisible to people who search for the content you provide.
This problem actually applies not only to Flex but for example to the latest AJAX framework from Adobe (Spry).
Nevertheless, Flex2 seems to be a very good platform. You just have to choose that you need most - presentatioon and hassle-free layout design or SEO features.
Posted on July 6, 2006 09:45 PM by Mike

"The problem is: your web-"pages" created with Flex will not be indexed by search engines - so you are effectively invisible to people who search for the content you provide."
Not entirely accurate. Google and I believe Yahoo also are fully capable of spidering your Flash SWF. However, you need to design your app properly for the spider to index the content you want, and not just a bunch of extraneous movieclip names.
As to the need for Linux support, I agree it's necessary, and it is coming. However, whether or not you can ignore it depends largely on who your target market is. If you're developing an app to use inhouse in a company that runs all windows workstations from Dell or IBM for example, you really could care less about Linux support. Same if your site is targeting the general consumer market because as much as most techheads would like to think otherwise, Linux accounts for such a small percentage of the consumer desktop market at this point it's not even worth the hassle of addressing.
Posted on July 7, 2006 01:57 AM by Nick Collins

I'm not sure if the "pages aren't indexable" argument is very storng because the market for Flex work isn't necessarily going to be content-driven apps. We're thinking more like desktop applications in which case search engine indexing is far less relevant (if not meaningless).
Posted on July 7, 2006 09:32 AM by Rich Ziade

11. Components. Ready-to use, flexible, extensible Flex 2 components make development really agile.
12. Actionscript 3. Real power Java-like language based on ECMA standard and even extending it.
Posted on July 11, 2006 06:03 AM by Rostislav Siryk

I like Flex and I really like what we've been able to do with it, but I really hope people don't start using it as a front-end to content based systems too.
It would completely 'break' what has made the web great - it is difficult to bookmark a piece of content embedded within Flash, nor can you apply your own CSS (even though Flex styles can be manipulated at runtime, the initial CSS is compiled when the SWF if produced).
Of course, as is pointed out, to have got that far you will already have had to create an API to serve the content to the Flex app, so it should be relatively simple to have a HTML route to the same content (i.e. the various Flash based players for Flickr content are a good example - they add to Flickr, but you can still get the data).
My fear is that some companies will like the productivity benefits of Flex, and fancy interface, and will neglect to develop a 'plain' version (in much the same way they neglect to develop for minor browsers).
Jeff : Cross-platform AJAX development is currently unjustifiably expensive to test. About the only hope is with the toolkits to abstract common AJAX functionality / browser differences. Most of the ones I've seen fail my 3-browser test. Unless they pass on Firefox they are not platform independent (IE is Windows, Safari is Mac). I'd argue that even forcing a user to use Firefox over Konqueror/Safari is also not good enough.
While the majority of companies never test on anything except IE6, the idea of a tool/framework that forces cross-platform compatibility by design is a good one. Although, as you say, Adobe's support of Flash on Linux has been less than stellar (if they don't have the resource to support it, perhaps they should consider opening it up, given there are existing community efforts to reverse engineer).
Posted on July 12, 2006 07:36 AM by JulesLt

I must admit, that as a new Linux (Ubuntu) convert, I can see that Linux will become more and more pervasive in the next few years.
Starting a nascent software development company means that I'm looking to do things cheap, and we're discovering fantastic software and frameworks. Not having to pay a 'Mac premium' or Windows licenses means Linux is the way to go.
I guess my point is that you can say that Linux is a small proportion of the user base, and it always will be smaller than Windows, at least in the foreseeable future, but it is growing exponentially.
Given that most Linux users would be somewhat more computer-savvy than most, it's probably a growing segment that you don't want to ignore.
Posted on July 17, 2006 12:33 PM by LinuxNewbie

I must admit, that as a new Linux (Ubuntu) convert, I can see that Linux will become more and more pervasive in the next few years.
Starting a nascent software development company means that I'm looking to do things cheap, and we're discovering fantastic software and frameworks. Not having to pay a 'Mac premium' or Windows licenses means Linux is the way to go.
I guess my point is that you can say that Linux is a small proportion of the user base, and it always will be smaller than Windows, at least in the foreseeable future, but it is growing exponentially.
Given that most Linux users would be somewhat more computer-savvy than most, it's probably a growing segment that you don't want to ignore.
Posted on July 17, 2006 12:34 PM by LinuxNewbie

Given that most Linux users would be somewhat more computer-savvy than most..
Is that why you felt the need to hit submit twice? To show off your "savvy"?
Posted on July 19, 2006 02:51 PM by abba bryant

Yup!!!
Posted on August 6, 2006 01:33 PM by Chris Charlton

>>Not having to pay a 'Mac premium' or Windows licenses means Linux is the way to go.
This might make sense if you are paying $5 to your programmers. But surely the odd few $100 for Windows isn't going to be very much compared with the salaries you are paying these people.
Posted on April 6, 2007 04:58 PM by John Ainsworth

I also like Flex, it's really simple and easy to use. Simple field validation is one really cool feature that I constantly use. I did some work in AJAX too, and it's not bad but I prefer Flex.
Posted on April 16, 2007 05:18 PM by Carl Sanders

Flex 2 is fantastic, I really like the things you can do with it and all the features it offers.
Posted on April 23, 2007 04:48 PM by Jason Willis

I am new to Flex, but I learned how to work with it really fast. It's very simple and effective environment. I haven't tried Flex2 yet, but after reading your post I'm eager to try it.
Posted on May 8, 2007 08:24 PM by Ted

I am absolutely amazed by Flex from the first moment. My favorite characteristic is rich media support, Flex really makes easy working with flash!
Posted on July 3, 2007 09:39 PM by Kevin Greene

Flex is really great. I'm a beginner but I like it already a lot.
Posted on July 25, 2007 06:51 PM by Samuel

Flex 2 is really fabulous! The Development Environment is my favorite aspect.
Posted on August 3, 2007 05:41 PM by Brian

I was in love with Flex 2 as soon as I started to work with it.
Posted on August 11, 2007 09:47 AM by David Simms

Flex 2 is fantastic!! :)
I'm a beginner but I like it already a lot.
Posted on August 27, 2007 05:54 PM by mp3 music

And here's 7 reasons why you should run as if the kitchen sink was on fire when somebody suggests using Adobe Flex on your next project; ***
;)
.t
Posted on September 3, 2007 10:21 AM by Thomas Hansen