Sam's on Silverlight - Ignoring Flex
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Published
Monday, October 22, 2007
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7:22 AM
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This Silverlight article over at Informit.com seems to completely ignore Adobe Flex as a solution for creating Adobe Flash Player based rich internet applications and worse highlights a lack of developer tools as a key negative. It seems wrong for a first tier publisher like Sam's to completely ignore a fairly obvious fact that Adobe created 2 development paradigms Flex and Flash to span the market both targeting Adobe Flash Player. Flex 2 was designed from the ground up for developers and the runtime (Flash Player 9) is currently installed on over 93% of end users machines. I agree with Adam (author) that Flash "leaves much to be desired" for developers but we fixed this by releasing 3 generations of Flex and very soon 4.
"The Flash development experience leaves much to be desired, however. Flash (the runtime environment, as well as the tool) suffers from the same basic problem as HTML: Many people are trying to use it for creating rich applications, but it was originally designed for something else (in this case, simple animations)."
Adam, I would recommend you Download Flex 3 Beta 2 and correct this gross omission in your book.
Cheers,
Ted :)
Ted,
Incorrect remarks regarding Flash/Flex are going to be prevasive. I recently read an otherwise excellent book on WPF by Chris Sells and he repeatedly mentioned things that Flash developers have been doing for years as new. He too has no concept of what Flash can do or how people program for it can missed that MS borrowed so much for WPF/Silverlight.
Personally,
I agree with Adam Nathan. The Flash development experience DOES leave much to be desired.
I started working with Flash in 2003 and was disgusted by ActionScript. And while significant enhancements have been made with Flex, I still do not feel it is anywhere near what is available within Silverlight.
C# = ECMA Standard.
ActionScript = No Standard.
Let's look at the evolution of ActionScript. You have to admit when it began it resembled a reporting language. Now it has tried to morph into an object oriented language. Next, it'll probably try to morph into an aspect oriented language. This frieghtens me.
If the underlying IR code is changing this much, it seems prone to security leaks and performance problems. I could be wrong.
These are my opinions. I know this is going to start an argument. But I'm always willing to defend my viewpoints.
Chad...
"C# = ECMA Standard.
ActionScript = No Standard."
huh???
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/actionscript3_overview.html
"ActionScript 3.0 is based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting. ActionScript 3.0 is compliant with the ECMAScript Language Specification, Third Edition (ECMA-262). It also contains functionality based on ongoing work on ECMAScript Edition 4, occurring within the ECMA standards body."
Key words "based on". Not "is".
Maybe it's jealousy after all but I don't think you can compare Silverlight which has just been released to the Flash/Flex platfrom . .. and if you were disgusted by ActionScript, good luck for JavaScript in Silverlight :)
I don't see why Silverlight will be better for the end user since it's also plugin based ...
I don't like the this vs that kind of debates, and for me Silverlight has nothing to do with Flash or Flex, it's Microsoft's attempt to get into the RIA world :)[And I'm sure they'll fail]
Adobe has released the only version 4 EcmaScript engine as Tamarin, and made it open source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarin_%28JIT%29
AS 2 was 'based on' ECMA 262, just like every other implementation of ECMAScript. AS3, on the other hand, _IS_ ECMA 262v4.
Does Flash/Flex development leave much to be desired? Sure, why not... Thermo will fix a HUGE gap, but there is plenty more that Adobe can work on.
Chad: I'd love to hear you defend your viewpoints, rather than just repeating FUD. I'd love to hear how you can compare a technology that's been evolving in it's market space for years to a month old release of technology that still hasn't fulfilled it's launch promises (i.e. linux support).
ok, so I suppose I should qualify my "is ECMA 262v4" remark.
Edition 4 has not yet been finalized. It is currently a work-in-progress, and as such, has some incompatibilities, as it was released 16 months ago.
The ECMAScript Wiki lists the 7 incompatibilities between AS3 and Edition 4...
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=clarification:adobe_as3
@Chad - So is that kind of like how Internet Explorer and Expression Web are "standards-based", so therefore leave a LOT to be desired?
So they skip FLEX and go to $ilverlight. :) Gives the Flex population higher end developers and designers. "If you want a toy use $ilverlight..." spoken with tongue in cheek...
Seems to me that it would be bad for them to speak of Flex. They don't have a book to market on Flex so it would be bad to speak of a wonderful product that they don't have a book that they can push on you. This is a sample chapter of the book. It seems like it doesn't offer much information other than to stroke your ego into letting you know that (sarcasm begin) you purchased the "right book" and that you are smart for purchasing it because there is no other alternative. And we are confident in it so much that we can waste ink and paper letting you know that you are great and made a smart decision to purchase the awesome book.(sarcasm end)
InformIT was providing a chapter of a book. No harm other than it looks like original content which makes it look like their opinion.
Now if O'Reilly started to ignore Flex I would be concerned.
The sad thing is every Silverlight article I see references a downfall of Flash and none of them are objective enough to show what Flash can do and Silverlight can't.
BTW, @julien, they won't fail. Trust me. They are competing products but Silverlight has some really sweet features and by having it around Adobe has to get off of their butts to really make Flash/Flex zing (not that they are slacking now).
As a .NET and an ActionScript developer it's really funny to hear about how great Silverlight is. I mean, come on - .NET is great but Silverlight needs YEARS to even contend. Silverlight isn't even complete yet, let alone available enough to be useful. The thought of using Silverlight for RIAs is laughable - it's a vector rendering engine that can interact with JavaScript. When CLR support does come (in a real release) it still won't have the desktop penteration that Flash does and Adobe will be years ahead.
.NET is fantastic, but to say that it's more of a standard than ActionScript is rubbish. XSD is a standard - ActionScript and C# are languages that, while they may be based on or even be exact implementations of a standard, are ultimately useless without the compilers, authoring tools, and (sometimes) operating systems that the companies that created them profit on. Real standards are vendor independent - if you can cite several independent C# (or ActionScript) compilers AND runtimes AND authoring tools you may be able to convince me that these technologies have purpose that transcends their immediate application and commercial goals.
You never know though, maybe Microsoft will offer Silverlight in brown. That should help.
As another .Net and Flex developer I see Silverlight the same as the 'Compact Framework'. It kind of works but not enough for a real application. MS can now tick off saying they have a development solution for the Compact Framework and for the RIA space.
They will never do a very good job of either and I think their attempt is just a 'half-baked' solution.
BUT, corporates will use it (Silverlight), because it's a Microsoft solution. I have been trying to get companies I contract to to use Flex and they just ignore all such discussions because it's not 'Microsoft'.
Now, if Adobe would release a Flex2 player for smart devices, I'll be really happy!!!
I think that there's a real danger that pre-conceived notions of the Flash Platform in these companies are going to be based on the pre-Flex days and biased Silverlight articles can feed off of these notions. Is there a case to rename the Flash Authoring Tool so as to make a clear distinction between tool and platform?
Come on, let Microsoft play too. They just want to join in on the $$$$ fun! :)
We developers/consumers will ultimately determine which "tool" provides our compilation needs.
Come on Adobe! Crank out some patches/fixes! Get that Flex IDE smokin!
Developers Unite!!!
:)
I was looking at Microsoft Popfly which utilized SilverLight as its GUI. The site requires you to install SilverLight but then complained that the SilverLight version I had installed previously is newer than what it accepts!? In the end I had to go to control panel to uninstall SilverLight on my computer and install the version from popfly before I can interact with the site. What a joke! How many lay users out there will bother to do this?
wow, that was almost like the ole PC vs Mac debates. Almost felt like home. Seriously, some of us (me included) drink too much of the Adobe Kool-aid and tend to think Adobe can do no wrong. (OK, don't get me started on Illustrator now. grr) Instead of playing the my dad can beat up your dad routine, we (Adobeites) just need to sit back and see what happens. They (Microsoft's camp) are going to talk bad about Flex and AS 3.0 without us telling them they are wrong and misquoting things. (Man it does feel like the ole days) When some people talk/write, they just don't look into all the facts, especially when they are super opinionated. Too bad books like that get published without someone making them look into both sides.
Let the apps people make with Flash/Flex speak for itself. We know who's right. I am surprised at Sam, but if it was only one chapter... hey.
Looks like the battle lines have been drawn! This is WAR!!
Look at listings "Listing 1.1" and "Listing 1.2" just to do a simple page. What are they talking about???
Flex is here and already working. BEA and SAP are moving to Flex.
Silverlight is another MS try... At least they keep trying.
I found it extremely funny how misguided this guy can be. Maybe the flash IDE isn't suited to RIA app development, but then that's why Adobe have released this thing called Flex. Does it ring any bells Adam??
I gave up on silverlight after many attempts to get some things working. I though, well as it's made by M$ it should be compatible with their own operating systems, but all I got were bugs and it was slow. Now lets consider Flex, it's based on Flash and runs in the Flash runtime. It's well over 90% penetration and so easy (nearly automatic) to install it if not available. I've played with Adobe Air, using Flex/Flash or HTML based apps and my development time of apps has decreased by about 90%. I'm using tools that I've known for years and it all just intergrates with the other software I've used in the past. Adobe listen to developers, they are all welcoming to comments/suggestions and some of the core developers will answer questions if you have problems. Adobe have never let me down and they continue to build innovative apps that are ultra stable.
It seems to be all too common that people are comparing Silverlight to Flash, which is totally the wrong thing to do. Silverlight compares to Flex which compares to Ajax (a bit).
One key "feature" that I have found amazing is how Adobe have employed developers to write "APIs" or "Connectors" to many key Web2.0 sites, such as Amazon S3, Flickr and many others. This really helps the general public developers such as myself and saves us so much time. Also they opensource much of their APIs which enables us to extend and learn from people who are "in the circle".
Looking to the future, I'm sure we will see a bit of silverlight penetration, but with so many popular companies using Flex and building AIR apps, such as Ebay, AOL and Nickelodeon. I can see a much higher penetration of AIR than silverlight. On a side note, I believe that this time the most popular thing is actually better, unlike the Windows/Mac/Linux argument ;)
So anyway, here are my thoughts, please disagree with them as you wish but this is how I feel. I'm an average developer just wanting to get my ideas out to as many people as I can and Adobe have enabled me to do this quickly and efficiently with their design/development tools.
Oh and I'm not employed by Adobe, though one day...you just never know :)
Ooooh... this is upsetting.
I agree with many others in that Flash isn't designed for RIA development, which as others have pointed out, is why Adobe released Flex.
Sorry, Adam. Do some research before you start bashing the wrong product.
On a side-note: the InformIt article has an ad next to it (related product?) where they advertise a Flash 5 book? It really looks like InformIt hasn't been updated the last 5-6 years?
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Kids...
"...My teams better than yours..."
"..Nah ah!!.. we so kick your butt dude...."
"...Damn it why won't the other teams acknowledge me.. why oh why.. i'mm going to blog this, hold my breathe and encourage the fanboi masses to rally behind my limited ability to make a point..."
:)
Guys,
Remember Borland? Remember Delphi? How much better it was than the crappy VB6 yet corporations kept using VB6 instead of Borland...
Lesson learned... Flash is very likely to have the same faith..