What I think we're being asked to do is to pay money for Flex to handle the
presentation layer, when we already have such a thing now - in either HTML,
ColdFusion, Mach-II, CSS, or Flash and Flash Comms. After seeing the
presentation twice now, I cant see what's there that isn't already
available.
Macromedia Flex provides a way for programmers to build Flash-based application interfaces using a clean declarative-style XML-based programming language (MXML).
As someone who has struggled with Flash for application interfaces, I think MXML is much more suited to my needs since I can programmatically create application interfaces without needing to be an expert with the Flash authoring environment! Flash Pro helped me a bit here - but I still struggled with complex controls and layout. Flex lets me specify layouts using an idiom with which I'm familiar.
I think you can get a good sense of Flex from this article:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/paradigm.html
Especially the stock price lookup application:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.macromedia.com/2003/mxml";>
<mx:WebService id="wsStock" wsdl="http://services.xmethods.net/soap/urn:xmethods-delayed- quotes.wsdl">
<mx:operation name="getQuote">
<mx:request>
<symbol>{symbol.text}</symbol>
</mx:request>
</mx:operation>
</mx:WebService> <mx:Label text="Enter a symbol:"/>
<mx:HBox>
<mx:TextInput id="symbol"/>
<mx:Button label="Get Quote" click='wsStock.getQuote.send()'/>
</mx:HBox><mx:Label id="quote" fontWeight="bold">{wsStock.getQuote.result}</mx:Label>
</mx:Application>
The application declares a web service invoker - specifying the operation you want to call (getQuote) and the argument you will pass (via the <mx:request> tag - pass the value of the <mx:TextInput> field - symbol.text). Then it declares the layout of the application:
- a label with the text Enter a symbol:
- a horizontal box containing:
- a text input field called symbol
- a button labeled Get Quote that invokes the web service when clicked
- a label whose value is the result of the web service call
I think CFers will find MXML relatively easy to learn since it is tag-based. You'd write your application logic using CFCs and then you have the choice of an HTML-based UI (perhaps using a framework like Mach II) or a Flash-based UI using Flex. But the entire application would be written in tag-based languages either way (with some CFscript or ECMAscript as appropriate).
Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/
"If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood
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