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Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha
mikepotter writes "Adobe announced Flex Builder Linux Alpha at the Adobe MAX conference today. This is a native Linux port of the Flex Builder IDE (based on Eclipse) for building rich Internet applications. 'Flex Builder Linux is a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux. We wanted to get an early release out with the base Flex Builder features so you could begin to provide us with your feedback and let us know your priorities for additional features.'"
I read what passes as an article here and it doesn't explain what Flex Builder is. And the summary didn't help with it trying to get as many flexes in as it possibly could. What is Flex Builder?
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
knowing adobe i have to ask "whats the price?"
Will you two stop saying Flex so much?
Would it be better to use the term GNU/Linux
See also
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
Just like Flash, this Flex software is likely to cost a ton of money. So, it will have negligible effect on the market.
Adobe is giving Drupal some serious loving too, and that's also of interest for the FLOSS CMS folks, no doubt.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/drupal.html
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
good- another company that realizes that linux adoption is inevitable.
I miss refactoring, reformatting and other functionality that most other eclipse builders offer. The UI designer is excellent though and miles better than anything I've seen for Java. Slightly tangential but the web service support in Flex is HORRIBLE. They need a wizard that generates proper type checked stubs from the wsdl rather than the dynamic binding crap they have at the moment.
It's repeated several times per sentence, it seems.
Adobe Flex is an compelling platform- As I understand, it's Adobe's attempt to bring desktop programming to Flash, using an Eclipse plugin and compiling either to standalone SWFs, or to files generated on the fly with your data.
It's got a few interesting widgets[1], and it's starting to be adopted in more places such as Yahoo's Maps application.
Also worth looking into is OpenLaszlo (http://www.openlaszlo.org/) which is written in a standardized XML language, and compiles to both SWF or DHTML. I've found that there aren't as many people in the community, and documentation is a bit lacking, but being able to compile to multiple runtimes is nice, as is the understanding that if Adobe changes their mind, you can always compile to Silverlight or some other destination down the road.
Both can call Java backends fairly easily, and both are OSS, although OpenLaszlo is far more open.
Also worth investigating is Haxe (Haxe.org), which generates Flash files, and uses it's own custom programming language for both the client and the server.
[1]
http://www.brightworks.com/technology/adobe_flex/components_widgets_etc.html
Colin Davis
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=657&threadid=1303887&enterthread=y
Posted by "jaydeex"
If they are using eclipse then why do they ship a binary installer? Why not use the Eclipse feature installation system or even a archive that contains the feature/plugin stuff. It's not that difficult. Nobody cares for flashy installers.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I am always curious about developing flash content but could never afford the tools. I have been a software developer for quite a few years and used many systems.
But....the player is not open-source - thinking about it, for me it would have made more sense to open-source the flash player rather than the tools and relax the distribution licence.
It would make more sense for Linux distributions to be allowed to include the flash player as part of the install.
From a business perspective they can make money from the development environment and have the flash player installed everywhere!
It's bad enough that I have to install proprietary ATI drivers (now changing-thankfully).
An alternative technology would be Moonlight/Mono - at least the source-code is available.
(I know..I know..Microsoft is 'evil'...patent concerns..blah..blah - at least the source code to the important bit - 'the platform' is available)
But well done - a step in the right direction!
IANAL, but the end user license agreements for the Adobe AIR SDK and Flex 3 SDK contain clauses that are rather frightening, which puts a serious crimp on how useful an IDE for those SDKs are.
From the Adobe AIR SDK EULA:
and from the Flex 3 SDK EULA:
These are very similar, differing mostly in the second set of restrictions.
While the whole clause is disconcerting (e.g., how the #$#@@#@$ can I warrant that my application and its AIR/Flex dependency doesn't interfere with the operability of arbitrary third-party programs?), what really scares me is the second set of restrictions:
Suppose a small village in Upper Mongolia enacts a statute that says push-buttons in GUIs are illegal. Why they would do that, I have no idea. But, once they do, if I have a AIR/Flex program that uses a push-button (say, an [OK] button), I'm in violation of the Adobe EULA, even if my program isn't used in that village. The Adobe EULA clause has no restrictions on relevant jurisdictions, or even timeframe (maybe you can't use the program on Sundays due to long-since-abandoned "blue laws", because the EULA doesn't constrain matters to only being laws, etc. currently in force).
Again, IANAL, and it may be that IAPBROTSI (I Am Paranoid Beyond Rationality On This Specific Issue). It's eminently possible that I could take these EULAs to a qualified attorney and be told that either I'm misunderstanding them or, while my interpretation is conceivable, they are unenforceable due to such-and-so restrictions on what you can have in a EULA. Let alone the whole question of the enforceability of EULAs and whatnot.
But I can't risk going to trial to defend my use of Adobe AIR or Flex, if I happen to do something that pisses Adobe off. Given sufficiently high-priced attorneys, Adobe could quite possibly convince a judge or jury that my paranoid interpretation is correct, and I'm stuck hoping that sanity would prevail on appeal or something.
Flex and AIR are really slick, but they ain't worth the headache to figure out my odds of prevailing should Adobe sue.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
I just took a look as OpenLaszlo again (it's been a while) and it looks nice. Maybe a bit shakey, though... Their 'introduction' page/app didn't load properly on linux (Opera) the first time, and UI ended up looking at just a 'wait' clock. Reloading brought it up.
The calendar demo doesn't work well either, as I've been completely unable to add an event (can't type, looks like there are missing controls) under Opera and Firefox, even if I try to reload it.
Also, http://www.openlaszlo.org/lps/laszlo-explorer/index.jsp?navset=nav10.xml&bookmark=Introduction looks quite slow. I see at the bottom that it's recompiling each time, but that's not immediately obvious.
Other than that, it looks promising. I just recommended we buy an app at work that will let us make video tutorials in flash quite quickly, but if I can learn that fast enough, I may change the recommendation... I'll have to take a closer look.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Let me say this bluntly: nothing that Adobe does is compelling to me as a developer, except to reiterate my outrage that corporations openly assume and exercise the power to suppress legal speech about legal activities.
[
mostly consists of annoying as hell boxes that say "You don't have the latest Flash, click here to download."
To which I usually back up to TEXT ONLY, er Non-Rich Google and choose another site. Now thats 'rich'.
I HAVE 2 versions of Flash installed already.
Besides the worst websites use flash, I mean even after I get flash, the site is still busy, ugly, and usually contains less info than a text cache at google anyway.
So now I guess we get another annoying download box.
They Live, We Sleep
If you were wanting to know more about this project, check it out here. After reading this, I really started wondering about Adobe on this one. Anyone else feel the same way?
Oh great just what we need another binary-blob in our Linux systems!
A binary-only Flash player and binary-only development system (at least open source the Player). If they want to charge money for the development system that's fine. But they are extremely naive to think this will be a successful venture into Linux.
There are alternatives; e.g.( Open Lazlo, Java, Moonlight) and are complete with source-code and no restricted licensing.
At least open-source the flash player and then it becomes a more appealing proposition.
I for one will not be downloading this as much as I love writing software the 'barrier-to-entry' is too high and will not participate spreading it's usage.
Linux gives me freedom to use my computer.
O.K. this is very hyperthetical - what if the 'flash system' became so widespread on the internet that *every* website needed it to function - You would have a virtual monopoly sitting right inside your system with no alternative!!??
No thank-you
A major software company is beginning to take Linux seriously and this is a 'Good Thing' but Adobe do not understand the Linuux 'marketplace'.
If I was 'web professional' I would buy their developer tools BUT at least open-source the Flash Player!
Informative
":1: premature EOF"? What the fuck does that mean?
So I can assume that this application generates 100% valid HTML and XHTML constructs, with their own proprietary Flash being an additional extension to that baseline, riiiiiight?
Flash is:
And this message goes to all of those "web developers" who use Flash in their websites.. please use HTML to deliver the Flash, not the reverse.
A complete open-source alternate is the mozilla xul and xbl.
http://www.x2ii.info/
to mention one other 'Release issue':
that it's 32bit only.
Typical. Just avoid them.
Their pricing model is sort of similar to what MS is doing with .NET. You can actually get a command-line compiler and build flex apps for free, just like you can compile to .net bytecode for free. What Adobe charges $500 for is the IDE (there is a standalone that's based on Eclipse and an Eclipse plugin). So what you're really paying for is code introspection, code behind, a debugger, and a design view (it seems that the design view doesn't work in the linux version).
There's also an educational version for around $40 and some kind of subscription service similar to microsoft select. You can also get a 30-day trial, which should be enough to get you up to speed on the language, then you could move to the free stuff if you wanted.
Like other client-side technologies, Flex makes liberal use of web services, and that's cool - Another thing you get if you actually buy Flex is something called ColdFusion remoting. This is a way of integrating with Adobe's coldfusion server. You build a SOAP web service in coldfusion, but if you have CF-Remoting then you can talk to that service with a different protocol that SOAP. Supposedly, it's faster because it's not using XML. But you're not locked into it because the service is still available as a standard web service, complete with WSDL and all that. Sounds intriguing. I haven't really checked it out.
- Open source (BSD license)
- Free as in beer.
- Free as in liberty.
- Great UI composer
- Built for web service integration
- Lots of nifty online tutorial videos
- Eats its own dogfood: It runs in the browser! (No Java, no activeX,
no flying pig aka Eclipse, just DHTML)
- And.. (drumroll, please) NO FLASH!
I've only been kicking it around for a few weeks, but its a fantastic tool. The learning curve is a bit steep, but now that I got my head around it, I'm not looking anywhere else.007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
Adobe has done a nice job of releasing specs and porting software to the GNU/Linux world but they do not believe in software freedom. You can legitimately complain that their releases are late, non free and patent encumbered. The lack of freedom is most evident in their readers, which won't let you cut and paste if the author foolishly wishes to raise themselves above the already insane restrictions of copyright law. Until they liberate their code and repudiate software patents they should not pretend to be friends of free software and people are better off without them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Boycott the tools creating files in proprietary formats, until Adobe either releases the source code for the player(s), or begins producing binary players for all platforms. Win/i386, MacOS/i386 and Linux/i386 is not enough...
It is one thing for them to want to make money off the authoring tools. But keeping the player closed serves no good purpose to anyone (not even Adobe) and inconveniences many thousands.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Lately Adobe has been labeling many of their products, especially frameworks related to web development as "open source" when in reality they open source a small part of it and leave the critical portions under an extremely restrictive proprietary license.
As I understand it they have claimed they will open source parts of the flex sdk, but the flex ide, and the flash runtime plugins will still remain under the same old proprietary license, this is not acceptable. It would be a step backwards if in a few years a significant portion of content on the internet was trapped in proprietary binaries that are difficult to index and likely impossible for many to use a few years down the road. Adobe releases some specs for flash but they are released under terms saying that if you read the specs you are forbidden from writing anything capable of working with flash files. This is almost worse than nothing because even if you create a flash plugin completely independently or with the use of clean room techniques Adobe has the option of claiming that you must have looked at their specs and take you to court in an attempt to kill your project. Also there are many restrictions on the use of the plugin itself, for example you can't use it in many commercial applications such as a flash driven kiosk without first paying Adobe again.
How many years did Linux languish with outdated and extremely buggy versions of the flash plugins? We may have a more or less up to date version of the plugin now but there is no guarantee it will stay that way, a great deal of internet content is trapped in a format that we can only view as long as Adobe feels like letting us, and the architecture support is still pathetic, how is it there is still no native x86-64 support? This should have been done two years ago, to make no mention of the lack of flash9 support on the smaller architectures such as powerpc which effectively locks ps3 users out of browsing most modern flash based websites.
Adobe seems like a big heavy software company that still operates primarily in a 1980's mentality, trying to make the transition to something more modern and web-centric , and they are trying to get some of the glow of open standards and open source to rub off on them, the problem is that they seem to be faking much of it. They talk about openness to get you interested, then you dig into it and find out that there are always critical components they are still keeping under lock and key. I am no fan of flash but it does have its uses, I keep hoping that pressure from Microsoft's silverlight will cause Adobe to really open up the flash spec and allow 3rd parties to create their own implementations of the flash ide and flash runtimes, as pressure from Microsoft's half-assed pdf alternative caused Adobe to release pdf as an iso standard. Though I see no sign of this happening as Adobe still seems to believe they can have their cake and eat it too.
To all those asking what this will cost... the real cost of working with Flex comes from purchasing licenses for FDS - the Flash Data Services backend. The IDE cost for me (in the few hundreds for Windows) was almost negligible compared to the FDS cost (in the several thousands). OpenLaszlo is a good alternative, but the major piece is lacks is support for messaging. That's what drove me to shell out major bucks for Flex - my requirements just couldn't do without messaging.
Please troll elsewhere. Kthx.
I'm sorry, I'm not getting this. Can you explain how you can "legitimately" complain about something Adobe does or doesn't do? Unless someone is forcing you to use their software at gunpoint, that is.
Adobe has no obligation to cater to your "freedom" and release their source code just because you think it would be nice for them to do so.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
wake me up when they release Photoshop for linux... anything short or that and Adobe can bite me!
The captcha for this post was "impede".. coincidence?.. I think not!
Look at Adobe, releasing something that people don't even really know what it is, while Shockwave, a massively used browser plugin, continues to be untouched.
I'm not going to give Adobe any slack until they release Shockwave for Linux. It's hurting many people, including the education sector, which is continuously switching to OSS platforms.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Sure, I can explain free software to you. At the very least, Adobe is forcing you to duplicate their work if you want to co-operate with them or their users. Can you tell me why they would want to do that? Can you then explain how a company that operates that way would not be tempted to introduce spurious features and make other changes that intentionally waste their customer's efforts? Non free software must keep users helpless and divided if it's owners want to keep their position. They divide their customers from one another and they divide their customers from the rest of the world. These are evil things that free software avoids.
Adobe has not been as bad as other companies, but they still require you to push an "I agree" button that signals your willingness to do as you are told instead of as you would like.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I think that's already been done...
The biggest problem with Flex is that the Data services, the piece it needs to actually talk to a real back end, is closed. $10,000 per server worth of closed.
Colin Davis
I disagree. I wouldn't use Flex Data Services even if they were free OSS. Flex has excellent built in support for using a REST backend. By building on top of FDS you are building yourself a middle tier that you can't reuse. By using REST you have a middle tier you can use with other technologies. If you are using Java, kick FDS to the curb and learn to build REST services using Castor or XFire.
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You're right that doing middleware through Xfire is perfectly viable.. It didn't seem very supported when we last looked into it, though, which is one of the reasons I was nervous. I do see Adobe's posted http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flexjava.html
though, which is a good first step.
Are you working with Flex->Xfire? How well does it work? Can you point me to any good resources?
I've been frustrated with the small team size behind OL, and it's seemingly lagging technology when compared to Flex- While OL has some really nice features, it's always one or two steps behind, since it needs to then implement a wrapper for the API..
Not to mention the speed difference- Since OL can compile to JS or SWF6, it's slower than a native AS3 app for SWF9 would be.
On the other hand, it allows a *LOT* more compatibility. With OL, you can compile to versions of flash that work without anything new installed except windows. It also supports DHTML fallback, which means you can do your magic everywhere, even an iPhone. They're also working on the new features, such as SWF9/AS3 compilation targets, which will give you a speedboost, without having to recode your work.
Like most things, it's a series of tradeoffs.
-Colin
Colin Davis
I'm sorry, I got my X(insert natual element here) projects confused. I meant XStream http://xstream.codehaus.org/ not XFire. I use Castor, I just know others use XStream for the same thing I use Castor for.
Basically, if you use Castor/XStream to produce XML documents for your objects, it's dirt simple to pull in the document and use it in Flex. An example of a project where we've done exactly that is this product: http://www.mastercard.com/us/business/en/smallbiz/specialoffers/index.html
Using Firebug, you should be able to see the types of REST responses we are using in the app. They are all produced with Castor, and consumed with Flex's built-in support for HTTP and XML.
As for compatibility, last figure I heard was 93% of browsers have Flash 9. Considering included in the remaining 7 percent are mobile devices, tinfoil-hat wearers, minimalists, etc, the 93% covers most of my target audience.
One thing I forgot to mention, if I started a project fresh today, I would seriously consider enunciate http://enunciate.codehaus.org/ or Axis2. Both seem to be a good way to easily produce a full REST stack (to fully handle get, post, put, and delete). I haven't had the chance to try either, but it's on my todo list.