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Adobe Flex 2 is a Real Winner!

[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/3_Reasons_why_Flex2_is_a_winner]Since the last week I've been getting my feet wet with Flex 2, a programmatic way to create Flash applications. And I'm thoroughly impressed by it! It's a promising Web 2.0 technology which has to potential to take your web experience to the next level. Flex 2 applications, because they are made in flash, are faster than equivalent AJAX applications while providing a richer, more desktop like, GUI. For example I'm not impressed by Google Docs, which is very slow compared to a desktop application but have a look at Gliffy, a promising MS Visio alternative of which I've been making increasing use of in the last few days. As is the custom nowadays, these are my top reasons why I think Flex 2 is a winner:

• Its EASY: Flex2 application have a very simple model: The application, including the GUI, are defined in standards compliant XML format (MXML), the application logic is defined in ActionScript 3.0, a language which is similar to Javascript but object oriented. You can relate this to AJAX applications, where the GUI is defined in HTML and the application logic is in Javascript, however Flex2 applications contain gui controls which are not found in HTML, and with the help of the Flex2 Builder, which is an IDE based on Eclipse, building Flex 2 applications is very easy and you can create a more richer interface experience.
• Its Extensible: Flex2 doesn't do everything, for example it can not connect to data services directly, rather you have to set up a data provider source which provides data in XML format for Flex2 applications to use. Flex2 supports various mechanism to communicate with other frameworks, it supports RPC for example, and it is very simple to link php with Flex2, so one can get a powerful backend in php, with an appealing GUI in Flex2.
• There are no cross-platform/browser issues: AJAX would be the best model if all browsers supported the same javascript or everyone would be using the same browser and you could never disable javascript. There are varying levels of support for DHTML and JavaScript in different browsers on different platform. With Flex2 applications you don't have this problem. You can get the latest Flash player from a single source, supporting a single API. The Flash Player runs on multiple platforms, which means (borrowing the standard Java phrase): Write once, run everywhere.

However there are some drawbacks to Flex2 aswell, Flex2 Builder is proprietary and not cheap (Its way more cheaper than it previously used to be), where as majority of AJAX frameworks are open source. However you can still develop Flex2 application for free by making use of the free Flex2 SDK

Having raved about Flex2, I dont think deploying flex2 for all types of web application is a good idea. I love to use AJAX enabled web application such as Google Maps and GMail, however I hate to use AJAX based desktop-type applications such as Google Docs. I think Flex2 is viable only for the development of desktop like applications for the web.