Archive for the ‘Flex’ Category

Flash IDE vs. Flex Builder 3 – Why Use Flex?

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)

For those of you hearing about Flex for the first time, you may be asking “what’s so special about Flex, and why should I use it instead of the Flash IDE?”  Well I can help with that.

So what’s Flex anyways?

Flex is a framework developed by Adobe that enables developers to more easily develop RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications).  The Flash IDE is great for creating animations and spiffy visual effects for web applications, but often times it is very tedious to create simple web forms and charts.  The world is beginning to realize that web users want more and more flashy web interfaces, which has caused a lot of web developers to spend a ton of time in the Flash IDE (hence the creation of Flex). 

When should you use Flex?

If you are creating web applications that use heavy flash, and you also want to use form components like text boxes and radio buttons, or you want to use other advanced web elements like data grids or charting, you definitely need to try out Flex.  The Flex SDK is free to download, but you have to pay for Flex Builder 3 ($249 for the Standard edition and $699 for the professional edition).  If you are serious about Flash development, I highly recommend purchasing at least the Standard edition.  The Professional edition comes with alot of extra graphing and charting components.  You can download the Flex Builder 3 free trial here:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flexbuilder3

Good Luck!

Posted in Flash, Flex, Web Design | Comments Off

Flex, Silverlight, HTML 5?… What’s Going On!?

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)

As  you might know, there’s  a lot of buzz going around about new RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology, in particular with regards to Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Google’s HTML 5.  What’s the difference between each one? 

What’s the difference between Flex, Silverlight, and HTML 5? 

Well, Adobe Flex has been out for awhile.  It’s an alternative  markup language that uses MXML instead of HTML and uses actionscript as its scripting language (very very similar to JavaScript).  Unlike HTML, Adobe Flex has a lot of built in components like advanced data grids and charts, while providing  other advanced style options for fundamental components like text areas and select boxes. 

Microsoft Silverlight has recently come out as a response to Adobe Flex (Yea, they copied the idea), and it’s pretty much the same thing except that it’s a Microsoft product that uses the .NET framework.  Both Flex and Silverlight can be embedded into HTML pages (meaning they run inside the browser).  

HTML5 on the other hand is something completely different than Flex or Silverlight.  It will be the new standard of HTML, which is currently being documented and developed as we speak by Google.  You can see the evolving documentation here:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

HTML 5 will revolutionize web design as we know it, and may possibly make multi-media browser plug-ins like Flash obsolete.  HTML 5 will include a whole new set of tags like <audio>, <video>, and <progress> that give developers access to very complex web elements without needing to use plug-ins.

For more information about HTML 5, check out:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/html-5-new-elements-new-draft-update-report-002819.php

Posted in Flash, Flex, HTML 5, Silverlight, Web Design | Comments Off