Enterprise ready GUI framework

Tomislav PokrajčićBinaria d.o.o.

Intro

Binaria d.o.o. Building for business, marketing,

entertainment and industry since 2007 Flash/AIR/Flex, Java, PHP, HTML5

Zagreb Flex User Group (www.zgflex.org) 2008

FlasHR (www.flashr.org) 2011

What is Flex?

Open source GUI framework Easy to build new components

& complex interactivity Fancy performance Superpowers show up on

projects that require GUI beyond standard components

Brief history

2004 - Macromedia Flex Server 1.0 i 1.5 2006 - Adobe Flex 2 2007 - Adobe Flex 3 (MPL) 2009 - Adobe Flex 3.5 2010 - Adobe Flex 4 2011 - Adobe Flex 4.5 2011 - Adobe Flex 4.6 2012 - Apache Flex 4.8 (4.6 parity

release)

Runtimes

Flash Player browser plugin (desktop, mobile)

AIR desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux)

AIR mobile (iOS, Android, Blackberry tablet OS, TV)

Languages

ActionScript3

Languages

MXML

Languages

FXG

Web/deskop components

Mobile components

Easy and powerful skinningOut of the box

Examples

Examples

Examples

Examples

Framework features

Mature and well documented i18n and L10n support Dev process shielded from 99%

of the browser issues

Development

Strong typing Namespaces support Compile time testing Easy refactoring Code obfuscation Unit testable (FlexUnit)

Framework features

Powerful internal component lifecycle Invalidation

Events Easy drag n’ drop support Easy data binding Validators, formatters,

transitions, effects

Connectivity

AMF remoting, WebServices, JSON, ...

Java ORB: BlazeDS, GraniteDS, ...

AS3 Object <-> Java object RPC

HTTP, polling, long polling, streaming

Flex Ecosystem

350.000 <= Flex developers <= 500.000

Many good IoC / MVC frameworks (Swiz,Parsley,Mate,RobotLegs,...)

Lots of other open source code (maps, graphics, charts, …)

Many commercial components Active community

Cons

Printing issues from browser Doesn’t work on mobile browsers Flex mobile apps performance not

blazing fast as native “Well, hello, it’s Flash!”

Current state

Fresh blood / more developers on project

Full open source life Framework detached from corporate

strategy Tools in bloom from other vendors

(Jetbrains, FDT...) Awaiting new compilers (Falcon,

FalconJS)

More

http://incubator.apache.org/flex flex-dev-

subscribe@incubator.apache.org www.zgflex.org www.flashr.org

tomislav.pokrajcic@binaria.hr