Haven´t used Flex Builder yet, but I must say I´m quite satisfied with the
Flash 8 IDE + FlashDevelop2 + mtasc bundle right now. Flash IDE is just fine
both for animations and for the building of forms IMHO.

Wether I will be going to Flex2 or haXe, keep working with AS2 will depend
on several factors... however, even though we are being overwhelmed by the
amount of options, it is indeed exciting to see all this new technology
emerging :) - so, one day after another...

- Marcelo.

On 5/23/06, Dave Watts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I guess whether you think it's a crappy analogy depends on
> whether you believe Form-based applications are different
> enough from other flash apps to warrant their own IDE.
> Personally, I don't. I can already build Form-based apps
> just fine in Flash 8 or with DHTML.  So please explain how
> Flex is superior (without using acronyms or buzzwords).

I don't know from superior - I have no knowledge or experience using the
Flash IDE, and I'm not a Flash programmer. I AM a Flex programmer,
however.
(An inexperienced Flex programmer, but you have to start somewhere.) I
also
have experience developing forms-based applications using other
traditional
IDEs, such as Visual Studio and its predecessors. These IDEs have a common
development idiom - you drag controls onto the form, you bind event
handlers
to them, etc. The Flash IDE does not follow this idiom, and the
FlexBuilder
IDE does. Whether you like it or not, this is very valuable if you want to
attract developers who are familiar with the idiom.

> Yes, the Eclipse IDE is cool.  Yes, AS 3 looks promising.
> But why not just build the Flash 9 IDE with an Eclipse-based
> actionscript compiler/editor?

It's all about the idiom, again - people with experience using traditional
forms-based IDEs expect to see certain things. Eclipse has those things,
the
Flash IDE doesn't (at least, as far as I know - again, I'm not a Flash
developer.)

> Ceating two similar but non-overlapping products is
> confusing.  I'm sure it will create all sorts of workflow
> headaches between artists and developers.

I don't think the two products are similar at all. In fact, if they didn't
create applications that used the same runtime environment (the Flash
Player
itself) you'd have no reason to assume they shared any commonality at all.

> And I'm really not looking forward to explaining to clients
> who may only have a passing familiarity with Flash that
> they're going to have to buy both Flash 9 and Flex 2 to
> compile my stuff. :(

Well, fortunately, they won't need to buy Flex 2 to compile your stuff.
There will apparently be a free, command-line Flex compiler which you can
download and use separately from FlexBuilder. In theory, you could just
use
Notepad or any other editor for Flex development, although that would
probably be quite tedious and painful; in the same way, you can write C#
apps with Notepad and compile them using the .NET MSIL compiler, but
yecch.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/

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