Kirk, I feel your pain. I too have build my world on Flex at my organization, but I have also just left it behind for HTML5. Even though I thought at one time Flex was the bomb, it was never going to get me to the mobile devices that we needed to get to. Alas, it's that whole Lion King thing...the circle of life!!. Flex must inevitably go the way of the 8-track tape, the record album, and the VHS video tape. (sniff sniff). Oh god, I am gonna get emotional.
When I first got into geoFlex dev, I jumped right in and started making really cool UX centered "apps". The learning curve was very reasonable. It included everything contained within the Flash Builder IDE: MXML, Actionscript, esri API, Flash Builder (Eclipse) idiosyncrasies. This allowed for a very standard, well understood development environment, be it esri GIS or not. You could go to a Flex Dev session and you were 100% guaranteed that everyone is on the same page. I feel that Flex geo-dev really allowed the developer to concentrate on crafting an end product that hits the nail on the geo-UX head and not get bogged down in the mechanics of the dev platform.
With pure web dev, I'm finding things much more challenging for the following reasons, all of which have their own discrete learning curves: HTML, CSS, JS, Dojo, jQuery, AngularJS, editor or IDE of choice (and there are a lot), responsive design patterns, task automation, testing frameworks. There is little standard here and when you sit down with esri Dev's (or even non esri devs), there is no "common ground". This dev does things one way and that dev does it another. Truly, to be very productive at this, one just needs to totally geek out on "web dev" and get neck deep into it and just love it for what it is. I haven't found a sweet spot yet and this after working with html/css/js for a few months now.
I remember during the 2008 UC, I was able to create unique Flex based web map apps from my hotel room, show them off to my manager and have very positive response. Within a year, things were really humming along. That isn't the case now with HTML/CSS/JS and I haven't put my finger on the reason. Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. I'd like to think that's not the case.
Royce:You said:PS - I'm on the web app builder beta and although it is pretty cool and easy to work with, it will need to grow 1000% to make it any better of an option than just using AGOL maps.Did you get an E-mail invitation? I ask because I read that it was supposed to be released on 3/28/14, but I have been able to access the beta site yet.
Kirk, ... as in the near future browser plugins will be history, and Flash player is a plugin that flex uses. Progress means change and you have to get use to it. ....
Raffi, Developing app is painfully slow for me as I am just leaning. but the one thing I can say is that if you are working with a lot of graphics the JS API is much quicker and better at handling 1000s of graphics. One of the real hard things for me so far has been my lack of enough knowledge to put together a dojo dialog widget that has an item renderer (or the JS equivalent). But I plan on spending some time with the JS API developers as the Dev Summit and get that part under my belt hopefully. I plan on continuing my Flex Development for a long time yet. What I have been trying do do in my spare time is taking smaller Flex API apps and attempting to duplicate all the functionality in a JS app.
Yes, but this is no different than a flash application.
About Javasctipt, I have a basic question, as I understand, all the code is executed on the client side
Dave,That's the thing... The dust is settling. Microsoft Internet Explorer has been the major hold back and now they are starting to grasp HTML5.As I mentioned I am not real excited about this but the Army taught me to be flexible. I have been dabbling in the JavaScript API for a while now as I know this day would come.
That said, as with all changes, I tend to wait out the initial whirlwind with these things, let the dust settle, and make an informed decision.
About Javasctipt, I have a basic question, as I understand, all the code is executed on the client side, so that enables anyone to grab all the code?
FB? you mean flash builder? while it might have its flaws while developing it has little to do w/the resources an app uses when deployed. and if you don't like FB, there are a few other dev platforms, intelliJ for instance, that are quite nice.
I say this and FB is about the only source that I know to create apps, this is inevitable. Apps created with FB run quite slow and memory intensive if you load any decent amount of dynamic data. Am not sure that JS will be better at this, am hopping it will be.
サインインしたメンバーは投稿、更新のフォローなどができます。初めてですか？無料アカウントを登録してください。
Find useful guides, FAQs, and documents to help you navigate and make the most of Esri Community.
