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Flash/Flex can handle complex applications just fine. Here are some examples of applications done with Flex: http://flex.org/showcase.php

In there is a timeline-based video editor, a calendaring/email/finance app, a task manager, and a photo editor. I've also seen a PowerPoint type presentation app, a Visio-type tool for creating object relationship charts, plus I've used it myself for creating a medical reporting application for diagnostic sensor data analysis. Flex can hold it's own very nicely against Java's capabilities, and I think it's easier to develop for and has a better experience installing and running on the client.

That said, we are currently trending away from using plugins at all, due to the mobile platform. More and more will be done with HTML/JavaScript/CSS, leaving plugin-based tools as more niche products for Web development. Flex however now compiles mobile applications, so I think we will see more life in that space.

I think we just talked past each other.

You're talking about web 'sites'.

I'm talking about web 'applications'.

I'm not talking about Flash movies, I'm talking about Flex apps. Yes, both use the Flash player, but they're very different things.

To do web apps in DHTML/JavaScript/Ajax you have to be real tricky, and its easy for browser settings to disrupt it. Only very recently do some of the javascript frameworks (prototype, dojo, etc etc) help to abstract you away from browser issues. But its not perfect.

So to do in place grid editing with model and business rule validations, lookups and validation of drop downs, recordset paging, and fast CRUD operations against the database or app server backing the web app. These things are fairly terrible to do in DHTML/JavaScript/Ajax. Can you do them? Yes. Is it easy? Not compared to other platforms like Flex or Silverlight.

Plus with Flex you get AS3/ES4 which is more of a real grown up language with optional static typing, namespaces, packages, etc. With Silverlight you get C#, VB.NET, Python, or ruby. All of which are better than JavaScript.

Not to mention you get a real canvas for dropping your controls and can do absolute or relative positioning (ie, flow or fixed) that ACTUALLY WORKS (compared to DHTML/CSS).

Doing that with HTML means you have to declare it for the least common denominator, then put in a special exception for IE6, and another special exception for Safari for Windows (which of course renders things differently than Safari for Mac), and special javascript libraries for Opera (which of course uses a different javascript engine than the others), and handle IE's auto-padding of images in a cell.

It just goes on like that endlessly. And its not getting any better! When using a richer platform like Flex or Silverlight, you dont have to deal with any of that crap. You target one platform, and it 'just works'. No trickery required.

And again, I'm not talking about web 'sites', I'm talking about applications that happen to use browsers as their UI. So Java/Spring/Hibernate/Oracle or RoR/MySQL on the backend, with the Flex/Silverlight talking REST or SOAP (or maybe something like BlazeDS) to these back ends.

I think you're going to see over the next 5 years a huge move away from DHMTL/JavaScript/Ajax for web apps to the richer platforms like Flex and Silverlight.

It's just too compelling for all the pieces. Its MUCH more productive from a developer standpoint. Faster time to market for the business. And a better experience for the user, with the only real downside is that they have to suffer through a short 'loading' time up front. But after that its much faster and more interactive than dhtml/ajax.

You'd be surprised how small the swf files coming out of Flex apps are though compared to typical flash movies. ActionScript code compresses very well, and grids, drop downs, tab controls, text boxes and the like take very little space to declare.

You can check out some examples at the Flex Showcase.

We also redid the Flex.org showcase with Drupal. http://flex.org/showcase/ http://drupal.org/node/177266 Mike Developer Marketing Manager Adobe Systems Inc.

Note: This tutorial is based on an example by Alexander Crugnola, in the example, Flex with AMFPHP. Please note that Alexander Crugnola's example is not specific to Drupal.

Yesterday the Adobe Flex team launched a Drupal powered application that showcases applications built with Adobe Flex. The new Flex Showcase is online now at http://flex.org/showcase_app.

The backend of the application uses Drupal, along with the Services, AMFPHP, Vote up / down and CCK modules. The front end of the application is written in Adobe Flex, with custom components written in Flash.

Drupal was chosen for the application because we needed a PHP framework that supported user registration and management, content management, categorization and tagging, and comments. Drupal was the best choice for these services, and with the work that Scott Nelson had already done with the Services and AMFPHP modules, the choice was easy.

I didn't know what it was either and, to be honest, I'm not even sure if the link I've provided is the same thing.

I call bull on "run identically in all major browsers and operating systems".
Actually they meant "IE, Firefox and Safari on Win and Mac OS". Even on Windows, only one of four Apps really works in Opera (Adobe's own Flex showcase gets caught up in my popup blocker, the VW thingie doesn't work at all, Buzzword serves up an "unsupported Browser" error. Picnik works).

Flex is a framework which sits on top of Flash. It is written in Actionscript 3. It provides a set of visual and data components that help to shorten the development time of RIAs (Rich Internet Apps). The data components provide support for XML, AMF, and RPC data protocols, which can be fed into Flex's UI components via data binding. The UI components are a robust set of widgets for building form-based interfaces quickly.

Flex also offers an enterprise-level Data Services module which provides support for real-time database update propagation (think: Joe orders a pizza. Mary's pizza order list immediately pops up a new order. This took place transparently.), dynamic data paging (think: User scrolls through a list of 2000 database records. As user stops/starts scrolling, Flex automatically fills the UI with pertinent entries from the DB.)

A good starting place for Flex info is: http://www.flex.org/