FLEX

Overview

Flex is a framework developed by Adobe to help develop RIA (Rich Internet Applications). Flex has been developed with developers in mind. It uses a kind of XML called MXML to organize applications and control the layout of GUI's. Which is great for developers as it enables the rapid dev elopement of effective desktop-like applications for the web. All the code in flex is written in Action Script. What makes Flex great is the separation of design and code. It is possible to design the whole look and feel of an application through MXML and CSS while the developers write the code in a completely different place.

Typical Applications

The goal of any RIA is to improve the user experience. With the advent of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And Xml) the web was able to escape the nightmare of every click loading a page and collect information from the server in the background while the user does other useful things. This has been dubbed web 2.0 However, with browser compatibility as diverse as it has ever been creating a consistent high quality user experience is still a massive challenge.

Flex enables developers and designers to work together to develop consistent, appeasing and productive applications and widgets to display your data effectively and efficiently.

Flex is suited to a wide range of applications take a look here for a complete showcase

Languages & Components

Flex can come as an SDK (Software Development Kit) or as part of an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) called Flex Builder which is based on the popular Eclipse IDE. Flex builder has lots of tools that are very useful for rapid development and previewing. Some especially useful features are the charting libraries that allow for the easy generation of graphs; data grids for managing data and HTTP Service for grabbing data from your server.

There are also many other plugins such as the plugin that integrates flex into the Grails framework.

Server Technology

Flex is independent of server side technology. If the browser is able to run flash then you can use Flex applications. What makes Flex really specially is some other accompanying technology called LCDS (Live Cycle Data Services) or the open source equivalent Blaze DS. This technology allows the flex app to directly hook into objects on your .NET, J2EE, Cold Fusion Server. This is very powerful and has the potential to really break free from restrictive API's.