| 1. Flex is available today and works. 2. Flex 2 is viewable in 85+% of web browsers, Flex 2 SWF files run in Flash Player 9. 3. You can use any HTTP Server and any backend technology (.NET,JAVA,PHP,Ruby,CF, Python) with Flex via XML, SOAP, Sockets, ZLIB, Etc. 4. Flex 2 has a mature and growing component set. There are lots of developers creating open source components for Flex and the source code for all components is available today in the Flex SDK. See: Flexbox, FlexLib, FlexComponents for details. 5. Flex does not integrate well with .NET on the backend. We are working on a great solution to make .NET integration seamless. Additionally strongly typed SOAP Web Services support coming in Flex 3 (very soon) including full support for .NET SOAP encodings. 6. Real-time data push with Binary Sockets using any TCP/IP Socket server. FTP/NNTP/SVN/POP/XMPP Example: http://webmessenger.yahoo.com 7. Graphical and Programatic skinning with Illustrator/Flash/Photoshop/CSS 8. There are many large companies actively developing RIA's with Flex, from JPMorgan/Chase to Yahoo to Google to many Web 2.0 start-ups. 9. If you develop using Flex or AJAX you can port your app to the desktop using Apollo. Apollo allows you to build desktop applications for WIN/LIN/OSX deployed as a single .AIR file cross-platform. One toolset for Web RIA and Desktop RIA development. 10. Flex has gone fully open source Mozilla Public License. All compilers and framework will be available for extension and embedding within the Flex 3 SDK. Plus all the minor video advantages that SL1.0 has will evaporate in weeks. It is an easy choice for me but I am pretty biased. Regards, Ted Patrick (ted@adobe.com)
Flex Evangelist, Adobe Systems |