Flex-ability
31 03 2004Macromedia Flex is released, rejoice all ye people! I’ve been a faithful disciple of the technology since I first heard about it, big up to the Flex team for their incredibly hard work and dedication to getting this product released.
Not unlike other software releases there is quite a bit of controversy about the marketing policy and product pricing. I’m not one to easily give criticism but I must admit that I’m a bit worried about adoption rates at a price tag of $12,000 USD for a two CPU license. How many freelance Flash developers regularly work for clients that commission projects that would warrant an investment of anything near that cost? We might just all be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the slow yet painful demise of Macromedia Generator which was an equally brilliant and innovative piece of technology in its day.
For a couple of years now there have been calls to get some kind of commandline Flash compiler developed, JSFL is a first step in making this possible though it is still quite a bit of a workaround and it doesn’t allow for developing outside the box.
This is where Flex comes in, what about releasing a version that doesn’t run on top of a J2EE server but simply generates a SWF based on MXML and ActionScript just like the real deal. I’m sure that if something like that was made available with a price range of around $1,000 USD many developers would use that in favour of the Flash IDE. Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Hi Peter,
http://www.xquestion.com
Thought you might be interested in this - it converts XML directly to SWF also. It is limited to only test/assessments/forms - but does .ttf conversion for fonts and allows incorporation of multiple other .swf files to produce a single swf with all the resources included.
Alex.
Central Question
If you look in the Flex livedocs http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flex under “Administering Flex”, there is information about using a command line compiler. The $8.99 “Free” CD will end up costing close to $100 by the time it crosses the Candian border, so I’ll wait until a downloadable version is available to play with, but perhaps this will make it easy for MM to sell a reasonably priced “non-server” version. $12,000 is probably reasonable for the type of big enterprise that is already paying $50K+ for WebSphere, WebLogic, etc. But a price comparable to Flash Pro would make Flex approachable to smaller businesses that simply want a more approachable method to displaying the odd dynamic datagrid or registration form. For these projects, once the SWF is compiled, there’s no reason to have a Flex server continually check if recompiling is necessary. A command line compile version suddenly makes lots of sense.
Good points Adam, thanks for that! I was oblivious to the fact they’ve already got a commandline compiler implemented. Also forgot to mention that the trial/developer edition is as you said only available to the wide public by ordering it on a cd-rom which is currently only available from the US, ordered with a credit card online and costs up to $40 USD to ship to Europe.
I’ve worked with Flex and I can truly appreciate it saves a tremendous amount of time, helps you with your workflow and is a very good tool for scripting Flash based applications.
Like yourself I can’t really figure out why exactly it’s primarily targeted as a server product. It generates SWF’s on the server from an MXML source and caches those until a newer version is available. Other than that there is no real magic going on. The SWF itself typically uses things like XMLConnector and WebServiceConnector components that handle the data input so there usually isn’t a great deal of hardcoded information in there that would need constant updating (though ofcourse you could build your application like that).
Only time will tell, the technology in itself is very promising indeed and I’ll probably be experimenting with it a lot more in future.
Hi - there was a hiccup in the system on the first day but the shipping price for the trial edition is $8.99, regardless of destination.
That’s great, thanks for clearing that up Libby!
“How many freelance Flash developers regularly work for clients that commission projects that would warrant an investment of anything near that cost?”
This isn’t really the target market for Flex at this time. The current version of Flex is really intended for enterprises who are interested in putting a rich, interactive, streamlined and highly efficient front-end on top of their existing J2EE (primarily) back-end. Of course, this isn’t the only use, and keep in mind that this is only the initial 1.0 release, so the technology is certain to evolve, but we really want to focus on one particular market right now and not make the mistake of spreading ourselves too thin. Does that make sense?
Thanks for your thoughts Christian, I appreciate that freelance developers aren’t really the target market at this time.
It does illustrate the various comments that are appearing throughout the community as they are typically seen from the freelance perspective.
Can anyone actually point out what benefits there are in having Flex run as a server? Surely a Flex developer knows when the MXML code has changed and could easily trigger a manual recompile, or am I missing something?
Hi,
I recieved my flex demo about a week ago. I was very surprised to see it in my mailbox just 4 days after my order. By now i’ve done some exercises from macromedia and i really love Flex. The only big disappointment is abviously the 12.000 dollar price tag. After just purchasing 2 professional communication server licenses i don’t see my company investing in Flex anytime soon. It’s an absolutely brilliant peice of technology but with a pricetag like this …. :[