I talking about a new product based on the same technology that Flex uses and repackage as a desktop development tool as a complimentary companion to Flash IDE. The bits of Flex technology that would make up this new product would include: the compiler, the framework and optionally Brady. This would provide all the advantages of Flex that you have described, but at an affordable price for the small development shop and small to medium enterprise. Buy one or two licenses so that developers can to what they are currently doing with the Flash IDE, but with all the advantages of ease and speed of development.
Chris
On Thu, 06 May 2004 15:18:36 +1000, Scott Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Chris,
I'm personally having trouble understanding what you want FLEX to do? FLEX is just another means to create FLASH (ie just like CFMX is another means to generate HTML) the end result is the same but the process is different.
In Flash IDE you are emmersed in Timelines/MovieClip mentality, in FLEX you aren't. Even though at the end of the day it kind of is, its still a lot easier to turn out a FLEX based RIA then it is a Flash RIA (keeping in mind, the RIA is based on FORM driven principals).
Putting together all the pieces to make a HTML style form in FLASH is quite time consuming and at times can be painful (preloaders, init screens etc). In FLEX, they short cut a lot of excess un-needed development time to allow you to focus on the business instead of the technology.
As for comparing FLASH to FLEX, although they have similiar ingredients, they are very different in a lot of ways (especially in development). FLEX is not only a compiler but a pre-fabricated framework (whether you want to use it or not, the core object loads most of the framework components anyway - see <mx:Application/> tags decompiled results). The seperation of FLEX the compiler from the pre-made framework, to my understanding is a pointless request, simply put you will have to make your own <mx:Application/> tag to get started anyway.
More importantly creation of a framework as opposed to the one existing (despite my pet hates about v2 framework, it is solid) is a big time waste / money burner for a FLEX client. The purpose of FLEX is to allow RAPID development of FLASH based applications with minimal effort. That is a big request for FLEX and it does perform to the task quite well.
You can mix in some JSP stuff but for CFMX mix-ins, i'm yet to see that example (except Blackstone which is a different concept altogether).
As for the differences between FLASH & FLEX, the process is my best answer. FLASH is painful, its a bottleneck of development time/costs and relies to heavily on single individuals. FLEX allows for mutliple developers aswell as the ability to use 3rd party development tools like CVS much more effeciently then in FLASH.
FLASH requires you to build it all from the ground up to even get started on a form or a screen, FLEX simply allows you to focus on the business logic and further expand into the UI shell (ie how you want the forms displayed etc).
Its so much easier to talk to Remote Objects (CFMX/SOAP etc) through Flex then it is through flash. Try building a grid system that talks to a server-side language through FLASH then do the same concept through FLEX, you will see a huge difference in time (not only turn around but development time itself).
Now, FLASH IDE itself has its own set of powers, mainly in the Multimedia arena (movies, animations, games etc) as despite how cool FLEX is to use via XML approach, it relies on PRE-MADE components. You still need FLASH IDE to create the components and at times do rather complex AS2.0 code.
So Yeah, tonnes of reasons why FLEX is different to FLASH, and why the two while use the same technology are different products.
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