blog
Real Flex Seminar - Flex 2 is Looking Great
August 15th, 2006 by Mark LetaFlex is an exciting technology from Adobe, that allows a programmer to create and publish highly interactive and expressive Web applications. Running in the Flash player on a user’s computers, Flex applications deliver innovative Web controls in a front-end interface that can be skinned and branded to meet most any creative needs. In addition, a Flex application can communicate with the server without having to refresh the Web page, resulting in a much more dynamic user experience than you find in traditional Web applications. The latest version of Flex (v. 2.0) improves upon the previous version in the number of Web controls available, layout capabilities and data services.
Having returned from the Real Flex seminar today, we’re excited about some of demos and applications we saw that are making use of the Flex platform. In addition, Flex 2 seems to have addressed a number of the development issues we found in working with Flex 1.5.
Core themes that Adobe stressed on Flex 2 included:
Applications that Run Real-Time
Flex allows you to tie Web controls directly to data providers that can be changing in real time. As the data changes, the Flex components automatically update themselves. The classic example is a stock ticker application. You can set one up in Flex that updates graphs and charts as market prices are constantly changing.
Collaboration Between Users of an Application
Flex 2 has a data services server product that allows for messaging between a user’s browser running an application, the server and another user’s browser running the same application. So as data changes or events occur on the first user’s instance of the application, they are reflect on the second user’s instance as well. The example given was a Customer Service Representative (CSR) application, where the CSR could communicate real-time with a person seaking help, stream video to their application instance and even take over the other user’s application to provide assistance.
Integration with Offline Desktop Technologies (Adobe Apollo)
With Apollo, Adobe is looking to create a way for a Web application (Flex/Flash/HTML/Javascript) to run in both online and offline modes. The idea is that you can be productive with the application regardless of whether or not you are online. The Apollo technology purports to allow you to create applications that will run on the desktops of all major OS’s and won’t require you to know seperate desktop technologies to do so. An application example, is a Web-based timesheet application that would allow you to enter your time even when you were not online. Adobe Apollo is slated for delivery first half of 2007.
Expressive Applications
Applications built with Flex are being labeled as more ‘expressive’, as they allow for more dynamic and interesting behaviors of Web controls in the browser. While there is certainly a usability challenge in that new behaviors require users to actually lean and become accustomed to then, they open up more possibilities for how users can interact with an application. Also, as Flex can integrate with Flash within itself the possibity to have much more creative experiences exists with Flex exists as well.
Flash Ubiquity
Adobe claims to have a 98% adoption rate of Flash running on desktops worldwide - more than any other software. Additionally, they claim to be able to upgrade that user base to a new version of Flash completely in about a year (also unprecedented). This ubiquity of Flash on the user desktop is helping to give credibility to Flex as a platform that will grow in adoption and use worldwide. As Flex applications are delivered through Flash, you can almost guarantee that users will be able to always use a Flex application.
