People do compare SWF's to EXE and the moment it doesn't add-up, its considered a "toy" and if you look at it through there eyes (which is a fair call) it does come off looking like a toy and minime JVM.
I don't buy that argument at all. Certainly doesn't wash with anyone whos ever tried to deploy an application on the web. Flash's real achilles heel is the pervasiveness of bad Flash experiences (which is a similar issue with CF development for that matter).
Perhaps Flash is piss poor when its handling large amounts of data when it shouldn't be. I found this recent Flex post on handling large data sets pretty straightforward:
http://www.markme.com/mchotin/archives/004610.cfm
Yes and No, What matts shown is the basics of how to think outside the square in breaking data up into chunks for consuming, thats all good and works well. Except, when you have an occasionally connected client situation, then you have to get a little more trickier as you don't have the benefit of a RemoteObject, and are then forced to go the XML path (ie our sales staff through-out the world, don't always have internet connectivity).
Occaisionally connected computing just doesn't work with Flash in the browser so that's not a great argument -- hence the emergence of Windows wrappers for Flash Player and Macromedia Central. Certainly there are better options than simply downloading a massive XML packet. You could start by building a more optimised storage mechanism within the local shared object. But we're off topic.. offline/online isn't Flex's market just yet at any rate.
Flash can hardly be considered a toy for the construction of RIA's. If it is, what is the "real deal"?
i never said it was a toy for RIA approach, i said it was a TOY in the eyes of attempting to use it like a desktop EXE. Hence "i wouldn't try and write a 3D Animation program in Flash"
Again we're kind of off topic.. this has little if anything to do with Flex development. People considering Flex undoubtedly understand the differentiation between desktop and RIA -- and if they don't the price of Flex is the least of their worries.
My general point is that Flex really is *not* all that expensive in comparison to other products in the space Macromedia are shooting for. Furthermore, Flex represents good ROI when applied to a project of relevant scope.
The more pointed question might be: is there a place for these sorts of large scale RIA apps at all? And is the only reason we don't see more of them because the tools to develop them haven't been around? It will be very interesting to see the sorts of apps people can build given the ability to apply more traditional development processes to what has historically been a very eclectic development environment.
-- geoff http://www.daemon.com.au/
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MXDU2004 + Macromedia DevCon AsiaPac + Sydney, Australia http://www.mxdu.com/ + 24-25 February, 2004
