Recent propaganda by Adobe has favored Flex, AIR and the upcoming Thermo, and many traditional flashers find their skills are at a disadvantage as competition has increased from the popular (and lucrative) RIA developer market.
As a flasher with a design backgrounds and a proclivity for mathematics, I took the road that led me from AS3, through the free SDK to Flex 3. I find Flex to be an less than friendly alternative. I often enjoy hacking away at it and extending its components programaticaly. Although the experience is not the same, the file sizes are huge (framework caching is equivalent to sweeping dust under a carpet) and precise graphical results take much much longer and always find myself amazed whenever I look back at stuff I did in flash 5-6-7.
The times have changed and we all face the challenge to evolve. The fact that all these soon to be popular tools are build leveraging the Flash API is a tribute to the communities commitment and dedication to relentlessly extend the boundaries of the .swf format. Now we find ourselves competing with Java dudes...smart people, but no one knows the API better than us. We have worked with it from it's infancy (/ syntax, tellTarget) to it's current form.
My shout to the community is not to let the newcomers step on our turf. We hold the secrets of the flash API and are the rare ones familiar with its complexities, faults and vulnerabilities. Don't give up, transition to AS3, learn MXML and help the community find ways to efficiently bridge the gap between Flex and Flash through your new IDE which should be Flex (SDK)......RIP flash.
posted by Paul Ortchanian in blog (44) | Comments (24) |
Alex Bustin said...
RIP Flash IDE? Sorry, I don't buy that. Which other IDE offers creatives a timeline?
The propaganda you're hearing is to build interest in a new product/methodology so that it's competitive. Adobe isn't telling you to switch.
Adobe haven't forgotten about the Flex IDE. From last years MAX, it was apparent that they are still looking to add new features to it such as Keyframe-less animation and IK.
At the end of the day, you use whichever IDE your comfortable with. If you're building RIA's then maybe Flex is for you. If you're building creative websites, then stick with Flash IDE. Or if you're skilled in AS3, then write pure AS3 projects in Flex Builder without the framework.
Lee said...
All I do is write AS3 apps, add PHP/Javascript/HTML, and quickly throw together Movieclip "components" in Flash. Flex seems overkill for this, no?
corban baxter said...
well I half way agree with you. but do you really think we are going to lose advertising sites to JAVA and C developers? I highly doubt it. They will never be as good at creative concepts and animation as a flash developer. we care about art and UI etc which is a hard to find in a technical mind.
as a flash developer we bring the PSD to life by seeing what its capable of and how we can better suite it for users experiences.
what do you think?
X. said...
You are overreacting.
paul+ortchanian said...
My challenge is to utilize Flex as a Flash dev tool. We are a community composed of rare breed developers. Flash developer bring designs to life and make them work.
If you are good at one programming language it’s just a matter of time to be good at another one. I just wanted flash dev's to look at Flex and MXML and say, hey why not, if it can help accelerate our process lets jumps into this and bridge the flash-flex gap. Its great that Java guys can build boring finance apps in Flex. Lets make those finance apps come to life.
Varun Shetty said...
well, I think you meant in a specific way and I completely agree to this article. I am a Designer who has learnt programming from the traditional Flash IDE. And the only scripting language I know is AS. With Flash 9 and AS 3.0 it has just changed so much and the learning curve to evolve is something I felt is too much. And there were this other programmers who started using flex and immediately recognized the power of Flash and its coding technique.
So the world has changed for a traditional flash scripter and his need to upgrade has been difficult and desperate.
btw. I have switched eventually from Flash to Flex and the coding IDE is so much better that I am hooked onto it. Its been sometime that I have used the Flash IDE for scripting now. But I usually depend upon that when I need to do some interesting thing.
ultimately, i believe to get the best output... you need flex and flash both and the right combination can rawk.
- so the new flex developers.. u gotta learn flash ide to be the best.. :P .. hehee kiddin
freddy said...
Adobe's move on that way would be so wrong, I really can't see any designer doing real day to day work, e.g. banners, graphic oriented websites, games, interactive apps, etc. on Flex, it just slows and complicate things too much to be an efficient tool at that.
It's like if you drive a 18 ton. truck to deliver pizzas around the block!, crazy, don't you think?
Flex has a big target audience as dev tool, but is not the same target as Flash, and not as big.
For me, I can switch to Flex, but what's the point if all the projects I get to work with(from at least 5 different locations around the world) are built on Flash IDE? and none of those are financial apps.
And Thermo looks good, but then again, what happens when the client ask for a custom solution not handled by the app, you'll need to dive into the code...hardly a mission for a designer.
itsricky said...
freddy your right... commercially thinking, its generally the clients that drive or choose what functionality a website or flash components of a w webdsite have. as soon as you need to break the mould and add in special components.. can you really see designers skilled in AS, who are trying to learn Flex or Thermo, jumping at the poppurtunity to add in extra plugins or add ons or go do a tutorial?
i dont know about you guys, but i really only know AS well too (trying to bust my way into AS3) and if somethings not working, you can just look at the problem in a different way (ie client changes their mind) and recode and its done.
it might feel like an 18 tonne truck delivering pizzas, but flash is beginning to fee llike delivering pizzas in a (not so flash) beat up 1960's combie van with heaps and heaps of crap in the back!
we'll see. read this: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/marsvenus/
freddy said...
itsricky: "1960's combie van" so right about that hehe, Flash definitely needs a big overhaul.
btw. great read on the listapart link, thanks!
Duncan Macdonald said...
I agree that it's overkill, but I'm a designer who resolutely refuses to learn to program. I don't think these disciplines are inter-changable, I don't think designers should be expected to write code, as the industry tends to expect them to.
Designers are not programmers.
At the end of the day, it just seems like the typical story.
A thousand ways to do the same thing, and none of them very impressive. "Oh look, we've got a new thing that does exactly what the old thing did, but in a different way". The end results look exactly the same, and I haven't seen a Flash site in 5 years that comes anywhere close to "breaking the mould".
Mike Britton said...
Thermo seems like an attempt to assuage designers who feel disinfranchised by the all-consuming wave of RIA development. As long as Flash is accessible to both creative people who eschew programming, and programmers who feel as if they are riding the RIA wave, we'll all be happy. IMO, the best thing that can happen to the Flash IDE are solid workflow improvements between developers and designers. Either that, or roll the Flash IDE's timeline workflow into After Effects.
Yohami said...
WTF! I do flash games. I code in flashdevelop but keep using the flash IDE for all of the graphic / animation part. Flex is just the wrong, wrong tool for many situations
paul+ortchanian said...
Yohami. I dont see why you wont use the IDE for you library, export as SWC and use flex Builder for your AS3 projects. You can take advantage of code hinting and completion and a mature debugger.
ek5 said...
WTF! I do flash games. I code in flashdevelop but keep using the flash IDE for all of the graphic / animation part. Flex is just the wrong, wrong tool for many situations
Ben said...
I agree completely. I want the debugging tools in Flex, without the overhead of MXML. I want to be able to import Flash objects easily into Flex and manipulate them.
There doesn't seem to be any easy answer yet. I've got a makeshift workflow, but I can't say it's great.
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Uber said...
Sorry, but for me, i dont want to take much time to do some adjustment for Adobe's new technologies. Im a designer not a programmer, and was forced to learn As2 to make everything i want to happy in my projects possible. AS3 seems to be a new language for me. Very much different from AS3. I thoought they were adding new features but they seems completely overhauled it. WTF! it took me yeears to learn the AS2 much for as3 plus Flex and mxml. what's that? duh?
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DFG said...
I just wish Acrobat reader would get smaller. that thing is code bloat on steroids!