Hey guys, glad to see some interest in Flex. I wrote about 20 flex related postings a while back, before they were deleted (I didnt follow some rule, i forget which).
I work for Adobe, I've been working with flex for about 4 years (since version pre-1.0). Now I work with our consulting arm, developing flex apps for high profile companies. I also advise on the future of the flex sdk (and you can too! Flex is now open source )
@uspry1:
Glad to see you taking your moderation duties seriously, we've needed that. not so glad to see your post above, looks like a flashdevelop ad! :-) I will agree, though, that it is a great free alternative to the FlexBuilder IDE. However, discounts are available, contact me for details.
@davidt:
In a nutshell, Flex is great for creating rich, interactive software user experiences that run on the flash player, or AIR , in the case of desktop apps (AIR = Adobe Integrated Runtime). I say 'Software' because it encompasses web , desktop, and in the future, mobile applications. Flex applications are purely front end, and connect to any flavour of middle tier technologies (asp/php/coldfusion/j2ee/etc). This has been possible for some time now with Flash, but Flex revolutionizes the development process. Flash was made with designers in mind, they are quick to grasp the concept of a 'stage', 'timeline' , and drawing/editing tools. Flex was built off the base Flash Player API, and it is essentially a framework , with dozens of classes that allow you to create applications with pure code, and no knowledge of the flash ide, in about one-third of the time it would take a flash developer. Using flex, you can leverage your common development practices seen in software engineering: Design Patterns, Code versioning, Agile methodologies, Unit Testing, Test Driven Development, etc. The Flex SDK is free, so you can write your apps in notepad, and download the compiler , but of course you'd be MUCH more efficient using Flex Builder, and / or Flashdevelop. The offer code hinting, and other features to REALLY speed up development. If you can afford it, get Flex Builder; one HUGE benefit is being able to debug your apps with breakpoints, as well as inspect the memory consumption of your classes in realtime.
I have to run, but feel free to drop me a line with any questions you might have : ekz[at]adobe.com . Here are some links:
Gallery of flex applications:
http://www.flex.org/showcaseGetting started (and other) videos:
http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/Getting+StartedAll Flex and Flex Builder Tutorials (by Adobe):
You will see links to PDFs and also online documentation
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/Tutorials from the flex community:
http://www.cflex.net/You can check some of my related posts on Nairaland , though its nothing compared to what i had up before:
http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?action=profile;u=148155;sa=showPostsI also strongly recommend subscribing to flexcoders yahoo email list
There are tens of thousands of past tips/help from people having common problems.
You can subscribe, or just search the mail archive.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/Here's an excerpt from the product page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/overview/"Flex provides a modern, standards-based language and programming model that supports common design patterns. MXML, a declarative XML-based language, is used to describe UI layout and behaviors, and ActionScript™ 3, a powerful object-oriented programming language, is used to create client logic. Flex also includes a rich component library with more than 100 proven, extensible UI components for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs), as well as an interactive Flex application debugger.
RIAs created with Flex can run in the browser using Adobe Flash® Player software or on the desktop on Adobe AIR™, the cross-operating system runtime. This enables Flex applications to run consistently across all major browsers and on the desktop. And using AIR, Flex applications can now access local data and system resources on the desktop. Both Flash Player and Adobe AIR are available as a free download on Adobe.com."
![Nairaland [Nigerian Forum] Home](http://www.nairaland.com/Themes/default/images/english/home.gif)
Author
