Adobe Flex and HTML. Which is the future?

[John King]

Is Flex going to replacing HTML? Are there any browsers that do not
support Flash? Are there anything that HTML/AJAX can do, but not Flex? Any comments?
[ January 06, 2008: Message edited by: John King ]

[Urs Waefler]

I am not quite sure, what you mean by Flex.

There is Adobe Flex. It is a collection of technologies, a framework.

HTML is something totally different.

HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally posted by John King:
Are there any browsers that do not support Flash?

It's not just browser support. It's whether the user has Flash installed. For Flex, you need a recent version. Users on dialup or non-technical users may be hesitant to download anything. Avoiding HTML leaves these users out. Not a good idea for a commercial site.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Jeanne Boyarsky:

It's not just browser support. It's whether the user has Flash installed. For Flex, you need a recent version. Users on dialup or non-technical users may be hesitant to download anything. Avoiding HTML leaves these users out. Not a good idea for a commercial site.

I don't agree with that. You'd be hard pressed to find a PC without flash installed. On an intranet site it may be a different story but Flash is pretty much out there. That's probably the least of your concerns when building a site using Flex.

Will Flex replace the way we currently develop apps now? Not anytime soon. And Flex isn't the only Flash kit out there. So a better question might be 'will flash replace current RIA technologies' and I really doubt it. I think they will all coexist in some fasion for a long time.

[John King]

There are just too many RIA frameworks, but only one Flex.
We have seen many similar open source frameworks, which are really
hurting Java as a whole.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by John King:
We have seen many similar open source frameworks, which are really
hurting Java as a whole.

Please cite the statistics supporting this claim.

[John King]

Web tier: Struts, JSF, Spring Webflow,
OR Mapping: Toplink, Hibernate, JDO, EJB entity beans, Java Persistence API (EJB3)
Business tier: Spring, EJB session beans
Build utilities: Ant, Maven, Make

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by John King:
Web tier: Struts, JSF, Spring Webflow,
OR Mapping: Toplink, Hibernate, JDO, EJB entity beans, Java Persistence API (EJB3)
Business tier: Spring, EJB session beans
Build utilities: Ant, Maven, Make

Ok, so how are those "...hurting java as a whole." ? I'm guessing this is your opinion? If so, thats fine. But don't state things as fact when they aren't.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by John King:
Web tier: Struts, JSF, Spring Webflow,
OR Mapping: Toplink, Hibernate, JDO, EJB entity beans, Java Persistence API (EJB3)
Business tier: Spring, EJB session beans
Build utilities: Ant, Maven, Make

Indeed, these are all Java systems. How does this "hurt" Java? They are part of Java, not competing with Java.

Or are you saying that having choices is bad? If so, I most heartily disagree. Choices are a very very good thing.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
I don't agree with that. You'd be hard pressed to find a PC without flash installed.

The latest version of Flash? I was under the impression Flex needed that to work. My mother's computer has a three year old version of Flash installed. Any guesses how old the computer is? In another three years, I imagine she will have a six year old version of Flash.

Not to say websites accommodate old software well now. I'm just mentioning the old software problem as an obstacle to Flex immediately replacing HTML. I agree it isn't the biggest obstacle to Flex. But I still think it is an obstacle. And one of a few that gets mentioned rarely at that. (The other two being accessibility and low bandwidth.)

[Bear Bibeault]

In the late 90's Flash was supposed to supplant HTML. Never happened. Why would anyone think that a niche technology such as Flex would fair any better?

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
In the late 90's Flash was supposed to supplant HTML. Never happened. Why would anyone think that a niche technology such as Flex would fair any better?

Well, Flex is Flash, sort of. Flex is a technology that allows you to create web sites that are rendered in Flash. I think what's happening now that is different than the 90s is RIA. Back then Flash was primarily used for multimedia and VERY annoying sites and ads. Now, Flash is actually seen as a viable solution for RIA with Flex as the development kit.

I still don't think it will overtake anything but I do believe it will get a proportionate share of the market.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Jeanne Boyarsky:

The latest version of Flash? I was under the impression Flex needed that to work. My mother's computer has a three year old version of Flash installed. Any guesses how old the computer is? In another three years, I imagine she will have a six year old version of Flash.

Not to say websites accommodate old software well now. I'm just mentioning the old software problem as an obstacle to Flex immediately replacing HTML. I agree it isn't the biggest obstacle to Flex. But I still think it is an obstacle. And one of a few that gets mentioned rarely at that. (The other two being accessibility and low bandwidth.)

My mother's computer is older than that and has Flash 9 because she went to a site that required Flash 9 and it said "want to upgrade?" and my mom clicked yes and 30 seconds later she had Flash 9.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
My mother's computer is older than that and has Flash 9 because she went to a site that required Flash 9 and it said "want to upgrade?" and my mom clicked yes and 30 seconds later she had Flash 9.

I taught my mother not to download things off the internet. She's very cautious and took that literally . I have managed to convince her it is ok to "download" PDF files.

[Eric Pascarello]

It is not going to be Flex and it is not going to be Flash and it is not going to be HTML. It is going to be silverlight!

Eric

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Eric Pascarello:
It is not going to be Flex and it is not going to be Flash and it is not going to be HTML. It is going to be silverlight!

Eric

:roll: You forgot a since you are obviously joking.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Jeanne Boyarsky:

I taught my mother not to download things off the internet. She's very cautious and took that literally . I have managed to convince her it is ok to "download" PDF files.

That's great!

[John King]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:


Ok, so how are those "...hurting java as a whole." ? I'm guessing this is your opinion? If so, thats fine. But don't state things as fact when they aren't.

Gregg,
I do not want to change the topic of the thread too much. We can dicssus it
under "Application Framework" category if you want to start it.

[Bear Bibeault]

How would that be changing the topic?