Are you interested in learning or using Flex?

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Chris Charlton's picture
Yes
55% (99 votes)
Maybe
11% (20 votes)
No
22% (39 votes)
Not sure yet
12% (21 votes)
Total votes: 179

Comments

Too heavy

PixelClever's picture

Flex is nice eye candy, but it's too heavy on resources for my taste.

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I would be interested to

toemaz's picture

I would be interested to learn whether Flex 3 actually solves this issue. I have experience with a Flex 2 app which was around 200 kB, and took a huge amount of time to load. Too much for a consumer app.
Solution was to rewrite it in AS3 which brought it down to 2 kB.

There has been some changes

christophrooms's picture

There has been some changes in Flex 3 to make loading faster ... Modules is an important part ...

More info on : http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=Part3_Build_Depl... (Then Application Design --> Improving Startup Performance).

Framework Caching

Chris Charlton's picture

The Flash Player caches Adobe signed frameworks, up to 20MB on a user's local machine; and that can be bumped up if the user wants. Like the comment before mentioned, you'd be using things like Modules and RSL's (Runtime Shared Libraries) to split up your application but at the minimum is the player's support for caching that not tied to the browser cache is what's propelling Flex into the next realm of adoption.

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

It should be much nicer in

smerrill's picture

It should be much nicer in the next version of Flash Player when the framework is already included in the player.

That's this version

Chris Charlton's picture

That's the version that's out already. Does HD (fullscreen) and dual-core support.

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

Yeah - I knew about the

smerrill's picture

Yeah - I knew about the other two features. Forgot HD, the fact that it supports H.264 video in any container is the coolest thing, to my mind. .mov with H.264? No problem. Cell phone .3gpp with H.264? Same deal.

Couple other formats too

Chris Charlton's picture

The next FLV format will be a based on a subset of H.264, like 3GP (which is supported as well), and we got M4V, MOV, MP4, M4A/AAC audio too(!), and of course the standard MP3, SWF, and FLV.

Someone did an AIR app that reads AIFF.

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

we've had such horrible

schuyler1d's picture

we've had such horrible experience with maintaining flash applications (horrible dev environment, difficult to see changes within VCS, etc.), we're trying to move as much as possible to JS and DOM. With things like:
http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/
there's very little we need it for. We contain it pretty easily to video--and then just use JS hooks to that.

More FLA than AS?

Chris Charlton's picture

Did you rely on an FLA to house your code? Or did you develop them with pure external AS files?

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

mostly AS files, but some

schuyler1d's picture

mostly AS files, but some things need to stay attached to objects in the UI (even if just the import) which ends up the the FLA. switching between them and code searching makes for very frustrating development.

Just use Flex

RobRoy's picture

Just use Flex. Version control works just like any other project and everything is OO. Don't go back to HTML/CSS!

Oh, we've done the opposite.

schuyler1d's picture

Oh, we've done the opposite. We've successfully migrated even most of our very interactive pieces to html/css/js. Our designers and programmers are working much more easily together, since tandem work is possible.

I don't think you know what you're talking about if you think javascript is not OO. Actionscript is an implementation of javascript, after all.

For objects within Flash/Flex, version control does NOT work the same. you get a binary blob and no diff. compare that to html/css.

ECMA script

Chris Charlton's picture

cough * ECMA script * cough

;)

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

since this is already a

schuyler1d's picture

since this is already a trollish thread, I'll wonder out loud why the we're stuck with a name that sounds like a disease. (cough cough cough :-)

Depends.

vordude's picture

Are you offering to teach?

I'm "teaching" at Drupalcon Boston 2008

Chris Charlton's picture

I'm "teaching" at Drupalcon Boston 2008. Are you coming?

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

oh excellent... so we'll see

purrin's picture

oh excellent... so we'll see each other. we gotta hang out and have some beers or something again.. I know almost zero flash so I'm not sure I'd learn anything in the class, but we'll definitely see each other around the conference.

-=- christopher

-=- christopher

Great session at Drupalcon Boston

johnvsc's picture

Also, great meeting you.

If anyone can, check out Brian McMurray's session on Wednesday... great guy with tons of knowledge!!!!!

Want to do Flash with Services...AS3

capoeirista's picture

modules

Chris Charlton's picture

Check out the Services module and the AMFPHP module.

Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant

I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us

Screencast

thewolrus's picture

Any chance to have some screencast from Drupalcon Boston 2008

here you can find some video

bennos's picture

here you can find some video from drupalcon boston 2008.

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=drupalconboston2008%20AND%20subj...

I've tried Flex a few months

kgp22's picture

I've tried Flex a few months ago and realized that it's not practical to use it. If you can create forms using Flash CS3, have knowledge of AMFPHP/XML-RPC then there isn't much problem about creating a flash interface for drupal.
I personally choose Flash CS3 over Flex.

Even a clock that does not tick is right twice in a day.

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