I've been off the Flash world for some time now and my next project will probably be built on the Flash Platform.
I love the Flash Platform. I used to work with Flash and built a big application in the past in Flash 8 (using the FAMES combo). Coming back now, and not sure which way to go for this next project. This Flex vs Flash debate is an old one, I know. Flex is marketed at developers, Flash at designers. However, sometimes you are both the designer and develope of the application. Sometimes, you just stumble upon someone who is a "deseloper", which is my case. This project will be a very visually stunning website. It will have animations, transitions, and tweens everywhere. The GUI will have its visual (skins?) heavily modified (don't think only CSS could do that). I'm a good, skilled developer. I don't mind creating some GUI component and classes from scratch if needed. I also don't mind coding some layout code if needed and build the GUI in Flash + AS3. Sometimes, coding from scratch is better than using a bloated API. However, this app will have lots of data to handle, indeed. That's why I'm considering Flex, since it is more geared to data handling than Flash. Maybe I will blend the two, using Flash for assembling the visuals and then melting them in the Flex app, however, don't know how FlexIble Flex is in this respect (heavily changing visuals). There are many pur Flash frameworks around, such as LowRA, I might just use that for general design patterns and build what I need. I think Flex is only appealing becouse of the GUI components and its data-aware nature, however, this is a very creative project and these (not sure if they are) components are usually hard to have its appearance and visual behavior modified. What do you guys think? Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Marcelo.
