The fact that there is this discussion at all tells me something is up. I've 
been burned by Adobe before as an Authorware user, and again now as a Flash / 
Flex user, and that's twice too many times for this little black duck.

From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf 
Of Mark
Sent: 13 January 2012 13:26
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Flex alternatives



I work on a very large flex application that runs within a web page. Most of 
the functionality is built within the flex application, but it does communicate 
to the server to get data and post results.

I'm in the process of moving all this to a combination of restful web services 
written in C# and Javascript on the client. For the client my plan is to use 
Dojo. Moving a lot of code to javascript scares me since it's not as structured 
as actionscript or other compiled languages, but I really see no other choice.

The main point I want to make is that I love Flex. I love how you can write an 
application to embed in a web page, then take that same code, put an air 
wrapper around it and have it run on mulitple OSes as a stand alone application 
with very little work, and believe it or not, it actually works everywhere.

The unfortunate thing is that for web based applications, if you want to 
support the IPAD, and your application needs to be embeded in a webpage, you're 
screwed. I work for a major publisher that supplies colleges and high schools 
web based course management systems and we are getting a lot of pressure to 
have our stuff work on IPADs.

For this reason alone, we need to convert to HTML5 and javascript. The main 
reason I'm not considering the ZKoss is that my group is a windows group. We 
have windows servers and are heavily invested in .Net. I admit the ZKoss stuff 
looks nice, but for us, it's really not an option.

IMO, the bottom line is that the IPAD is killing Flex, and unless you're just 
writing stand alone applications, you should stop using Flex. It's a shame it's 
come to this though.

--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com<mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com>, "Ron G" 
<rgrimes@...> wrote:
>
>
> I have used Flex since 2006, and I have used ZKoss within the last year. I 
> can tell you that the learning curve of ZKoss is much lower than Flex, and 
> the development cycle is even faster. In your spare time, if you're curious 
> like me and like to check out different technologies, give it a whirl, just 
> so you'll have a good comparison. I think you'll be impressed - even if you 
> don't ever use it for a project. I think you'll agree that HTML/CSS/JS is not 
> a faster development environment, regardless of IDE.
>
> Would truly love to hear your assessment of it at some point.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I was always a big fan of Flex and touted its virtues 
> whenever I could over the past several years. So, I have nothing against it. 
> I'll be using it for years as I maintain existing projects written in Flex. 
> But, with respect, I think you do a disservice to continue to tell developers 
> to use Flex. You are only telling them to build a backlog of projects that 
> will have to be converted one day. But, I understand you work for Adobe and 
> can't very well say exactly what you think developers should do.
>
> Ron
>
> --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com<mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com>, Alex 
> Harui <aharui@> wrote:
> >
> > Flex and FlashBuilder are not part of Adobe's HTML strategy per-se. 
> > FlashBuilder is being directed towards Gaming in Flash, Flex is being 
> > donated to the community. It is the community that has lots of investment 
> > in the Flex/AS/FP stack that are looking reworking the Flex paradigm to 
> > output to the HTML/CSS/JS stack.
> >
> > Meanwhile Adobe is not only updating Dreamweaver (see the PhoneGap features 
> > added in 5.5) but also looking at new tools for new development 
> > methodologies. While classic Java has been around for a while, and 
> > HTML/CSS/JS will likely meet your 15 year requirement, the question remains 
> > whether you will be willing to use more efficient and powerful development 
> > frameworks and methodologies over those years. If you don't, you might lose 
> > competitive advantage as your competition gets their products finished 
> > better or faster, but if you do, you run the risk of choosing a new set of 
> > tools that turns out not to have lasting power. Tough call, no right 
> > answer, the choice is yours.
> >
> > It looks like the Apache Flex folks are going to try to provide one of 
> > those new sets of tools by making it possible to use the Flex paradigm for 
> > the HTML stack.
>

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