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Adobe Releases Flex 2.0 Beta
An anonymous reader writes "The battle between Microsoft and Adobe continues as Adobe releases the beta of Flex 2.0. This comes just a few days after Microsoft released a preview of Sparkle. From the article: 'Adobe today released the beta version of Flex 2.0, the latest software from Adobe Labs. The release follows the Alpha test release in earlier January. Aimed at developers of Internet content, the beta version of Flex includes Flash Player 8.5 client, Flex Framework 2.0, as well as Flex Builder 2.0, Flex Enterprise Services 2.0 and Flex Charting Components.' Some of the cool new features include the ability to view source so you can see how the Flash application was built, and an announcement today that some of the tools to build Flash applications will be available for free."
From Wikipedia:
The FLEX single-tasking operating system was developed by the company TSC for the Motorola 6800 in the 1970s. It was also later ported to the Motorola 6809.
That's surely a must-have!
So, you don't know what it is but state it's the "same hype as 'AJAX' except with Flash wedged in"?
But Flash has been going down this "platform" route for the past several revisions, with increasingly more annoying UI in the editor for animators - the 5->MX transition threw a bunch of speedbumps right in the middle of the animation workflow, and they seem to be slated to linger forever. I keep hoping the Adobe buyout will mean they actually fix the editor UI to not require about twice the clicks it used to for basic symbol-oriented animation...
If you want to make animations, Flex will disappoint you. There isn't even a timeline. It's targeted at developers, not designers, but yes, it's a Macromedia product.
Personally, I think it's great. The compiler is written in Java, so it works on Linux, too. The next Flashplayer (8.5) has new VM with JIT compiling, and is much, much faster than the old one (they'll skip v8 and are working on a Linux version for 8.5 already).
Flex has been around for quite some time now--way before Macromedia was acquired.
Here's the breakdown: Flex allows you to create web applications using Flash as the interface. Yeah, you can do this yourself, but Flex does all the hard work, such as laying out the UI and joining it with the business logic. If you've programmed your application using MVC or some other tiered application development pattern, you should be able to hook your Flex-built Flash movie into the business logic controller and it will work. The advantage to doing it this way is that you don't have to fool around with HTML/CSS/JS and getting it to work cross-browser. Flash is Flash--you do it once and it looks right, no cross-browser problems.
It's not meant to replace simple menus and contact forms, it's for creating hardcore programs--things like a CRM tool or project management software. Pretty much anything enterprise-wide.
The reason it might not make sense to you is because you're a designer/animator, not a programmer. Or at least that's how it sounds. Web app developers can get pretty excited about Flex--it saves the work of designing the application cross browser, and most of the components are prebuilt and more powerful than standard web counterparts. It's ridiculous trying to build a dynamic chart on the web.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
It's really the only game in town if you want to write desktop-style apps that live in the browser
I'm curious to know if your team looked into OpenLaszlo. There are some pretty nice apps built on it—the Behr Paint ColorSmart tool used an early version (before they opened the source), and I think Pandora is built on it as well. I'd really like to hear from someone who's compared the two. I have a database-driven Flash project coming up, and I can buy Flex if I have a good reason to, but if Laszlo will work it would sure be nice.
Flexbuilder 2 is for Flashplayer 8.5, which is at "prerealese" at the moment. The Linux version is being worked on, but I guess it'll take a while, and then it will take time for users to install it.
In any case, you can download the (Windows-) Beta already and compare.
This Harley Davidson customizer is a cool example of something built using Flex (though granted, its not built using Flex 2.0).
Laszlo was around before Flex existed, and it works on Flash Player 5 (whereas Flex requires version 7.) In fact, that's one of the biggest differences between the two, if you want to leverage the features (and improvements) specific to Flash Player 7 and above, you can't do it in Laszlo (yet.) They also use different XML dialects for construction, and many people find Flex's to be easier to use and more powerful. I don't have much hands on experience with either, sad to say, but I did weigh Laszlo against Flex 1.5 awhile back, and tested out Laszlo locally and it didn't really cut it for what I was looking for. Having just started using ColdFusion's new Flash forms (which use a mini Flex server embedded in the CF server) I am itching to get my hands on Flex 2. Of course, that would require having the time to play with it. :)
On a more complex level, Flash based Flex applications are robust interactive SOA applications with the ability to easily hook into various data services (JMS/Messaging, AMF[POJOs,OpenAMF via PHP, Coldfusion CFCs], XML over HTTP, and WebServices/SOAP).
So you can make rich desktop like applications with all the great stuff like drag and drop, interact with video, webcams, microphones, key events like CTRL and Function keys. Thin clients, where the app loads once. But have the deployment ease of a web application, and are platform agnostic (unix,mac,windows,pdas,cellphones,etc....).
Though the best way to see what it's all about is to look at live applications on the web:
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/Yahoo Mapsn .swfBlog Readera rch.htmlFlickr PhotoSearch.
http://www.thoughtfaqtory.com/flex/mxnaviewer/mai
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/pent/flickr/PhotoSe