Adobe had today released the Flex 3 framework and the FlexBuilder 3 IDE. This is an exciting development for anyone interested in creating rich interactive applications (RIA) for both the desktop and the web. A couple of days ago I spoke to Steven Heintz (senior product manager for Flex), and started out by asking him about Flex’s new AIR framework. Like, for instance, what exactly is it, anyhow...?
“AIR is going to redefine how people think of RIA,” Heintz says, “It can be used to create applications in a browser, on a desktop or in devices.”
EBay already has an AIR application in development. This lets users work offline - preparing listings to be uploaded, say - and then connect onto EBay to buy or sell items.
Flex gives the developer the ability to create graphical user interfaces with drag and drop, move and resize capabilities which are completely cross-browser and cross-OS compatible. Since Flex applications generally use Flash as the front-end display technology, any browser capable of hosting the Flash Player can host a Flex application without having to mess about with all the tweaks and fixes that plague cross-platform development using HTML and AJAX.
According to Heintz, the latest version of Flash Player (v 9.0) is now installed on about 96% of all internet-connected computers. While Microsoft would like the world to make the switch to its new Silverlight technology - a clear attempt to beat Flash at its own game - the Redmond software giant faces an uphill struggle. “People choose Flash because it is the most widely distributed piece of software in the world,” Heintz says.
From the point of view of programmers who want to create tools to support Flex development, the open source policy is terrific news. Flex 3 has open sourced its debugger, compiler, visual design features and more.
We’ll be covering Flex development in some depth in Bitwise in the coming months. In the meantime, you can download Flex 3 and a 60-day trial of FlexBuilder 3 from the Adobe site.
Useful Links...
http://opensource.adobe.com
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/
http://labs.adobe.com/
http://www.flex.org
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