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."

Comments

What Flex Is.

[Tariq Ahmed]

For those asking: At a real basic level, Flex is an XML language that let's you compile Flash applications. Developing an application in Flash directly is extremely time consuming, and not suited for developer types.

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 Maps
http://www.thoughtfaqtory.com/flex/mxnaviewer/main .swfBlog Reader
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/pent/flickr/PhotoSea rch.htmlFlickr PhotoSearch.