What made Adobe Flex more "palatable" than its predecessors?
I have been developing enterprise software for the past 10 years. During this time, we have seen enterprise applications migrate from client server to thin clients. We've also seen a move towards hosted solutions, albeit under several names (asp, SaaS, cloud computing). With all of these changes, the leap forward has been largely driven by the IT department rather than the end user. In the early rounds of these revolutions, the user experience was reduced in the name of a single point of control and reduced the desktop area.
During this time, there have been many attempts to provide a rich user experience while satisfying Crotchety's IT department. The first was the industry leader Microsoft in the form of an ActiveX control. The guys at Sun then followed the applet example and then most recently java webstart. All of these decisions seemed to scratch the itch but didn't get broad expectations from stricter IT departments.
Then Flex entered the scene from Macromedia. What did they do differently? Is it sustainable? Is Microsoft's emulation with Silverlight good enough to be a game changer? Will web programming change forever?
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Adobe has succeeded because almost all major browser users on major platforms have already installed a single executable component required for Flex; which is a Flash player. The Flash Player has already demonstrated that this is not a vector for Bad Stuff; it runs in its sandbox in a browser isolated from hardware and OS. Thus, no new (and potentially dangerous) software has been installed.
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There is a significant developer community for Flash technology, and the addition of some new controls to Flash and the maturity in ActionScript for writing software has put it above the threshold to be fully useful as RUI.
(ActiveX is Windows-0, everything in java is perceived as destabilizing and too heavy, and java does not have time to drive itself into ubiquity, and it may never happen. Thus, as a rule, and not at the user's choice This is despite the fact that Adobe is probably the most destructive source of unsolicited "check-updates" and other malware-related programs that we deal with in our ecosystem.)
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Microsoft started to work with Silverlight quite aggressively, requiring only the installation of the Flash runtime equivalent; but this is not universally even on Windows machines; penetration to other platforms in the future is quite an important path; and MS has yet to prove that political strikes are not yet harmless. But don't count. I think they took a step back by switching to .NET languages (with a limited CLR) for development; this seems to me to be the same strategy that deoxygenated their WinCE strategy; but we'll see again. But at least they've taken the obvious step from language agnosticism to a desire to coerce developers into .NETland.
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Web programming is changing forever one way or another; users will demand a better, thinner user interface; there is no perfect answer in sight, but at least there is competition for hearts and minds. I think the most hopeful signs from Microsoft are moving towards platform neutrals like MVC, Iron Stuff, and increasingly unpolluted code streams to the browser.
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My Flex success:
1- Adobe has made the right move in opensourcing not only AIR, but also Flex, Flash VM and the PDF standard.
2- Robust Flash Legacy Flash (it works on any Flash enabled browser) means the vast majority of browsers already support it and don't need to download a large plugin to access it.
3- Adobe has covered all major server technologies and provided support for them to get PHP. MS or Java Store, everyone will feel comfortable using Adobe's client-side technology.
Previously, Flex was proprietary, costly, and even relied on a server-side installation, which denied it, even though the Flash client was so widely available.
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- YouTube and the general ubiquity of Flash video has anchored the Flash player in over 95% of the browsers that reach the public on the Internet.
- The inclusion of a Flex GUI for the form design with widgets and an extremely well-designed GUI SDK was a major turning point for the Flash player. Flex 2 and Flashplayer 9 were the tipping points where this technology really flakes off. enterprise developers quickly realized that this technology was the right approach for the application. (At JavaOne in 2006, Adobe Flex 2 was the most impressive and pivotal technology I've seen there.)
- Flash runtime is sufficient to run RIA GUI on the web browser sandbox setup - Java applets need a full JRE (about 16MB). Flash runtime was much more compact and smart design Purpose. (Sun has just started fixing this for Java via their JavaFX and reworked the JRE that can load a few MB as enough to run the web applet. They have nothing like YouTube Flash videos for even though they manage their installations.)
- Writing Flex RIA applications is a comparative experience to writing old school HTML / JavaScript AJAX applications. Much more and less effort can be made to achieve such goals.
- Adobe supports Flex with other important details like BlazeDS (and they are now partnering with SpringSource to create BlazeDS and Spring-program for smoother integration).
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A single-threaded GUI in combination for asynchronous service calls (or messaging) and ActionScript3 closure is a great programming model:
- Likewise, Adobe Flex has excellent implementation of properties, events, and data binding.
- A declarative language, ala MXML, is really the best approach to describing a form (which is essentially a kind of MVC pattern). This is more eloquent than the equivalent imperative ActionScript code that would accomplish the same and thus make it clearer. The hierarchical structure of the MXML script tends to fit naturally well to the pane / widget views.
- With the Flex RIA MVC approach, the pattern can be implemented entirely at the client level. Web based MVC in the middle tier - with the presentation tier running into the remote client tier, was a fundamentally flawed approach to MVC. MVC should be done directly to which is directly facing the user. (Once again, Adobe Flex does things right architecturally.)
- Despite the fact that HTML / DOM / JavaScript has considered the ubiquitous standard for the Internet web, the Adobe Flash player is actually a more ubiquitous and consistent standard — covering different browsers and system platforms. The HTML / DOM / JavaScript standard is in the relevance of a fragmented mess that gets more fragmented every day Google and Microsoft are taking different directions in regards to the web browser. Adobe Flash Player ends with this perfect end to this dilemma. This is a great programming experience for coders and ubiquitous enough for business suits.
- Adobe supports the major platforms Windows, Mac OS X and Linux very well. They pay special attention to the Linux platform. This will pay off in the long term as developers are already settling on Linux to make their development from, and it has been widely used for servers that host their mid-tier. Adobe's recent 64-bit Flash Player for Linux is a miracle. They already have AIR 1.5 Linux. They do a decent job there supporting the platform that the developers care about.
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