Flex Intro
When I started with flash it was at version 3. Very little scripting was involved with this animation tool. We were able to stop and start and animation, tell a target to do something and give a button actions. Basically, it wasn’t developer oriented and was used primarily for animations and “killer website Intro’s”. As the product evolved so did the demand for interaction such as forms, network connectivity and other features. Macromedia started evolving the language called ActionScript. By the time Flash reached version 6 we were using it to create full applications. ActionScript at the time was impressive and powerful but wasn’t really a full OOP language. As developers, we had to create applications following non-standard practices like for example using the timeline to create what we needed. Non-Flash developers wanting to explore the possibilities of flash were hard pressed to understand the timeline and how to append nibbles of code here and there on it. In contrast, designers were losing the battle against this language that was getting more and more complex. That is when Macromedia decided to separate the two and created Flex. Flex and Flash output the same; however these tools are used for different approaches. Flex is geared towards developers and Flash is geared towards designers. Although we could certainly create an application in Flash, a complex application is much easier to develop in Flex. On the other hand, Flex does not process any design tools other than simple layout tools for our application. The integration between the two products is well kept however; for example we can create flash objects and control them in flex. The two tools work well together to create rich internet applications.
To recap, the description of Flex as quoted from the Adobe Website would be: “A cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems.”
The list of good example applications is too long to list here, but here are few: Adobe share, Buzzword, Picnik, Flauntr, Scrapblog, Mattamy IFP and much more at the Flex showcase.
At MAX this week Adobe released the new Flex 3 Beta 2. New features of Flex 3 include: Data Wizard support for .NET, Persistent framework caching, Refactoring support, Advanced Datagrid and more.
Flex is one of many tools you can use to build your Rich Internet Application. If you choose Flex, here is what you will need:
Flex Builder 2 or Eclipse plug-in (Demo)
Free Flex SDK 2.0.1