topic Re: Flex or HTML5?? in ArcGIS API for Flex Questions

Flex or HTML5??

CesarNaranjo — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:32:44 GMT

Adobe announce not more develop for FLEX.
Then what is the future of marriage arcgis-flex?

It is good idea to continue developing in flex o rnot more?

Money, time, work many things for many things to think about

Re: Flex or HTML5??

DasaPaddock — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:08:24 GMT

Adobe is no longer releasing new versions of the mobile browser Flash Player plugin.

Adobe is still supporting and working on future Flex SDK releases.

Please see:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-announcements.html

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/articles/recent-updates.html

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2011/11/17/Some-thoughts-on-the-direction-of-the-ArcGIS-web-mapping-APIs-_2800_JavaScript_2C00_-Flex_2C00_-and-Silverlight_2900_.aspx

Re: Flex or HTML5??

DerekLaw — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:09:52 GMT

Hi Cesar,

Just to add onto Dasa's post, please review this ArcGIS Server blog post,

Some thoughts on the ArcGIS web mapping APIs (JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight)

Hope this helps,

Re: Future of ArcGIS API for Flex?

ReneRubalcava — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:20:14 GMT

Dasa chimed in over here
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/43859-Adobe-donating-Flex-to-open-source-community

It's basically going from Adobe Flex to Apache Flex.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

RichardWatson — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:37:20 GMT

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-announcements.html

Q: What is Adobe's position on HTML5?

In the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for enterprise application development.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

Anonymous User — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:18:48 GMT

Please review the following article that would throw more light on Esri�??s stance to the Web API�??s.

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2011/11/17/Some-thoughts-on-the-direction-of-the-ArcGIS-web-mapping-APIs-_2800_JavaScript_2C00_-Flex_2C00_-and-Silverlight_2900_.aspx

Re: Flex or HTML5??

MikeExon — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:46:53 GMT

There is a nice summary of Flash/Flex, Silverlight and their future here...
http://www.georelated.com/2011/11/web-mapping-enabling-technology-are.html

Re: Flex or HTML5??

PaulHastings1 — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:05:10 GMT

that "georelated" article continually uses the term "standard" for HTML5 when its not yet a standard & probably won't be one until 2015. yes, adobe advises HTML5 for enterprise but in the "long term" (5 years) & that's provided major browsers actually comply w/what will be the HTML5 standard (if you've been around long enough, you'd know not to trust browser makers to do anything "right"). and to get everybody on board w/HTML5 capable browsers is going to take a fairly long time, you won't be able to just jump to HTML5, you'll still need to produce apps for older, non-HTML5 browsers (and who's going to pay for that? probably end up using flex in the end anyway).

furthermore the current tooling for JS/HTML5 is pretty awful. until somebody produces an equivalent to flash builder for JS/HTML5, development is going to be slow, painful & expensive. JS itself is painful to develop large/complex apps (i don't know of any).

all adobe has done is dump flash for mobile browsers (which hardly anybody used). and in case you don't know there are a horrifying number of mobile browser versions out in the wild, having to fully support all of them was probably another reason to dump flash on mobile browsers. adobe finally make flex open source (which people have been complaining about for years), which i think is a very positive thing.

adobe has not killed off flash or flex. you've probably got at least 5+ years of flex to go. i wouldn't jump ship just yet.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

RichardWatson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:11:02 GMT

Isn't GMail a significant JS application?

BTW, I largely agree with everything you said. I think that JS/HTML5/CSS represents what I refer to as the devolution of programming, i.e. moving to lower levels of abstraction where programming is more difficult and it is harder to be productive.

I personally love C/C++ and can debug assembly language so the issue is not that I can't move lower in the stack. The issue is that I prefer not to move lower unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

PaulHastings1 — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:07:41 GMT

i would call gmail significant but not particularly complex. and anyway, geez, that's google. who else has google's engineering resources?

the trend for years, at least server side, has been towards more dev productivity (eg, coldfusion), not less. i don't get the rush backwards.

one, i think important, point i forgot to mention is the apple/canvas tag HTML5 boogeyman. flex will soon be opensource (except for the tooling & player--which i think adobe simply can't OS because they license stuff in the player). we could soon be faced with a different proprietary overlord, but instead of a fairly open adobe we get apple, who's ideas of technology seem to be more penal colony than their "1984" commercial suggested way back when.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

RoyceSimpson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:56:09 GMT

i would call gmail significant but not particularly complex. and anyway, geez, that's google. who else has google's engineering resources?

the trend for years, at least server side, has been towards more dev productivity (eg, coldfusion), not less. i don't get the rush backwards.

one, i think important, point i forgot to mention is the apple/canvas tag HTML5 boogeyman. flex will soon be opensource (except for the tooling & player--which i think adobe simply can't OS because they license stuff in the player). we could soon be faced with a different proprietary overlord, but instead of a fairly open adobe we get apple, who's ideas of technology seem to be more penal colony than their "1984" commercial suggested way back when.

I've been trying to immerse myself in a logical, well rationed understanding of all of this and am 100% in line with your analysis and won't add anything to it.

Too bad the news Adobe is dribbling out re Flex/Flash is not being done in a crystal clear fashion and is serving to needlessly spook a lot of impatient, easily spooked folks.

Re: Flex or HTML5??

PaulHastings1 — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:10:15 GMT

i think this site helps sum up the current situation nicely: http://ishtml5readyyet.com/

Re: Flex or HTML5??

KirkMower — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:35:23 GMT

HTML 5 is a presentation layer. So if all you want to do is tween an animation across a screen, or make some fold-out menus, then go for it. HTML 5 is not an application development platform. Flex is an application development platform. Flash started out where HTML 5 is now in 1997 when Macromedia purchased the then start-up 'FutureSplash'.

FutureSplash was amazing in that it streamed content to the browser plug-in, greatly reducing download speeds. This allowed for animations far beyond the animated GIFs of the day. HTML 5, on the other hand, relies on heavy duty broadband connections of today - that is everything has to be loaded before _anything_ can happen. Flex has evolved out of the long and rich history of Flash - and a lot of smart ColdFusion people (like Paul). It can still stream data into the app - just try and load some WFS data via HTML 5 ... oh, and then take that GML and actually _draw_ something meaningful. That's one big reinvention of the wheel. Flex and its Flash underpinnings can draw just about anything right now - add in the ready made graphing libraries, the widgets to load tiles...oh and the 'stage' in Flex has always had a layered concept - no need for all that flunking around with Z levels, etc...

Mobile Flex development = AIR. AIR is the wrapper for Flex apps that will allow a flex app to be deployed anywhere - iOS, Android, Desktop, Mac, and so on. And right now, the Flash player in the browser displays exactly the same content across _all_ browsers - Mozilla, IE and its variants, Chrome, Opera, Dolphin (even on Android)...and right now, none of these browsers support the standard for JavaScript in the same way, let alone HTML 5.

So the proto-Marxist dream of everybody getting together and working to standards for the common good, well, is a great idea in theory (like Marxism itself), but the commercial model always tends towards Microsoft's own approach to standards: 'Embrace, extend, extinguish'. Sad but true, and Flex has managed to cut through all of that type of BS over a long history with Flash and delivers a solid and robust app development platform for the web and mobile right now. No 'ifs', 'and's or 'buts'...