I have spoken to someone who works for a company doing some web applications. She is responsible for user experience and said that most of the stuff there is done with Adobe flex. I googled it and, to my surprise, flex is open-source.

I'd like your opinion about it. Is it worth learning? Is it popular in the web development sector?

edit: can it be developed using native linux tools?

From what little I know flex is written in ecmascript in plain text files. I did get a simple program running and was impressed by the potential of the system.

Compiled Flex applications are run with Adobe Flash. They also sell a fancy GUI IDE.

And that's almost everything I can remember about it.

Thanks. I'll have to do some more googling.

If this is going to be for a website's navigation, I think that plain HTML and CSS should be used instead. Some browsers don't have Flash, and even if they do, middle-clicking to open in a new window won't work (not to mention browsers that let you navigate by keyboard by labeling links with numbers).

If you mean the unfortunate trend of creating entire web sites in Flash, then I agree it does suck. HTML and CSS are standards every browser and web appliance can adhere to, so they should be used.

My interest in Flex was along other lines.

That is what I meant.

I second (third) that. For me a website whose start page in Flash is often a nogo. At all. Flash is disabled in my Firefox by default.

I really feel abused by web developers who force me to see anything moving, and I see no point in making static pages in Flash.

Yes, I'd never build a flash website just to have a few animations on the page. Where (unfortunately) flash is still needed is for websites containing some interactive courses/apps/tests featuring audio/video material. I think flash is heavily used in the education sector. I have never been interested in flash-based websites, but from what I can see in my company they rely on it for providing members of staff with online training. I haven't followed the recent development on the HTML5 front, but hopefully it'll at least partially replace flash in the near future.

Flash is most definitely not necessary for those services. For example, Java can easily provide interactive pages, full blown web applications, and streaming media. My college used Java applications for most of the apps students interacted with from the web, for example.

Remember that the creators of the WWW wisely included features to enable browsers to support users with disabilities. I've never seen a Flash web site with such support, and ditto for most other interactive sites. People who don't understand the WWW should not be allowed to break it, especially not for the sake of some flashy animation.

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Ok, I didn't know that Java can be integrated with websites. Everyday you learn something new. Another thing to research...

Hi -
This is absolutely *not* true in general.

Direct competitors to Adobe Flex include:

* Microsoft Silverlight (a very strong competitor)
* Sun (now Oracle) JavaFX (a distant 3rd, at best)
* Java applets, Flash animations, ActiveX controls, etc etc
... and ...
* Plain old HTML/CSS/Javascript

Here are two interesting articles:

http://bexhuff.com/2009/06/html-5-versus-flash-flex
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/madgreek...verlight-26764

If you want to do "Rich Internet Applications" today, I think your best bet is to get a firm grasp of:

* Conformant HTML (XHTML 1.0 or higher)
* CSS
* Javascript and Ajax
* One or more Javascript libraries (like Dojo, for example)

As far as RIA "tomorrow", I definitely believe the future belongs to HTML 5.

IMHO .. PSM

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