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Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 03, 2007 06:58 AM
from the joining-the-party dept.
from the joining-the-party dept.
mikepotter writes "Adobe announced Flex Builder Linux Alpha at the Adobe MAX conference today. This is a native Linux port of the Flex Builder IDE (based on Eclipse) for building rich Internet applications. 'Flex Builder Linux is a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux. We wanted to get an early release out with the base Flex Builder features so you could begin to provide us with your feedback and let us know your priorities for additional features.'"
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I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I'll help anyhow:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/ [adobe.com]
"Adobe® Flex 3 is a cross platform, open source framework for creating rich Internet applications that run identically in all major browsers and operating systems."
Parent
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"Adobe® Flex 3 is a cross platform, open source framework for creating rich Internet applications that run identically in all major browsers and operating systems."
The flex part is just the interactive messaging between the proprietary flash client application and whatever you are running on the server to feed it with data. It is analogous to what you might do with AJAX, except the major browsers still don't support the open source equivalent of flash animations which is SVG animation. There is nothing open source about the actual applications that are running under the proprietary flash player browser plugin. Flash is still as closed and proprietary a format as ev
Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Look at Flex as a way for programmers to make Flash applications. The Flash Animator thing (or whatever it was called) is good for Designers and Animators, but hard to work in if you're a traditional programmer.
As such this is a plugin for the Eclipse IDE to maek Flash applications.
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free? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Free with an extra 85mb of bloatware added to it
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http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexbuilder/ [adobe.com]
For Flex Builder 2 that's more or less 500 USD (depending on the country you live in).
pricing model (Score:3, Informative)
There's also an educational version
Eclipse ain't all the Adobe FLOSS lovin'... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/drupal.html [adobe.com]
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Okay, maybe that's not serious enough to be called Drupal lovin', but this is [drupal.org]:
linux support (Score:3, Interesting)
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FlexBuilder is okay but... (Score:2)
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Flex versus Open Laszlo (Score:5, Informative)
It's got a few interesting widgets[1], and it's starting to be adopted in more places such as Yahoo's Maps application.
Also worth looking into is OpenLaszlo (http://www.openlaszlo.org/) which is written in a standardized XML language, and compiles to both SWF or DHTML. I've found that there aren't as many people in the community, and documentation is a bit lacking, but being able to compile to multiple runtimes is nice, as is the understanding that if Adobe changes their mind, you can always compile to Silverlight or some other destination down the road.
Both can call Java backends fairly easily, and both are OSS, although OpenLaszlo is far more open.
Also worth investigating is Haxe (Haxe.org), which generates Flash files, and uses it's own custom programming language for both the client and the server.
[1]
http://www.brightworks.com/technology/adobe_flex/components_widgets_etc.html [brightworks.com]
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The calendar demo doesn't work well either, as I've been completely unable to add an event (can't type, looks like there are missing controls) under Opera and Firefox, even if I try to reload it.
Also, http://www.openlaszlo.org/lps/laszlo-explore [openlaszlo.org]
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Let me say this bluntly: nothing that Adobe does is compelling to me as a developer, except to reiterate my outrage that corporations openly assume and exercise the power to suppress legal speech about legal activities. [freesklyarov.org]
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Binary installer for eclipse!? (Score:3)
Re:Binary installer for eclipse!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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This wouldn't stop them. The Flex Builder installer doesn't ask for your serial #. I think more it is more likely because the installer asks if you want to install the plugin into an existing Eclipse / WebSphere / whatever install, or install the standalone FlexBuilder IDE (also based on Eclipse). The standalone version appears to be more stable and is installed with its own JVM. You don't get asked for your serial # until you create a Flex project.
Not open source, though. (Score:5, Informative)
SDK EULA Terms (Score:2)
IANAL, but the end user license agreements for the Adobe AIR SDK and Flex 3 SDK contain clauses that are rather frightening, which puts a serious crimp on how useful an IDE for those SDKs are.
From the Adobe AIR SDK EULA:
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If I were to continue to use the product in violation of the EULA, Adobe would have to take me to court to force an injunction against such use.
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Yes, but most I've read tend to have restrictions that are solely there to protect the intellectual property of the software maker. So you get terms that prevent reverse engineering and whatnot. Those typically don't bother me, as I have no intention of violating their intellectual property rights. Once you get to the level where clauses creep in that, say, prevent publishing performance test results, I try to avoid using that technology. Adobe's clauses I quoted above are just plain brazen.
All that being
So Adobe now works with "standard" web? (Score:4, Insightful)
So I can assume that this application generates 100% valid HTML and XHTML constructs, with their own proprietary Flash being an additional extension to that baseline, riiiiiight?
Flash is:
And this message goes to all of those "web developers" who use Flash in their websites.. please use HTML to deliver the Flash, not the reverse.
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If you want a website and some basic interaction with the user, then use HTML and a server-side language.
But if for some reason you need to let a user do a lot of very complex data manipulation, then doing it client-side makes more sense, and in that situation, HTML and javascript has *always* been the *wrong* answer. It has always been
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1. Nonstandard, proprietary
Available on 99% of machines, 93% on flash 9. (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html). It's not a standard, but in all practicality is. Sure something open source and standards based would be preferred. However, I feel better about developing for flash than I do for ActiveX
2. Not easily indexed by search engines
True, but indexing may not be important to you, based on what kind of internet application you are developing.
3. Does not work consistently in all browsers
It's seems more consistent than HTML... and it's a vendor that is at least seeking
The best Flex alternative no one's heard of... (Score:4, Interesting)
- Open source (BSD license)
- Free as in beer.
- Free as in liberty.
- Great UI composer
- Built for web service integration
- Lots of nifty online tutorial videos
- Eats its own dogfood: It runs in the browser! (No Java, no activeX,
no flying pig aka Eclipse, just DHTML)
- And.. (drumroll, please) NO FLASH!
I've only been kicking it around for a few weeks, but its a fantastic tool. The learning curve is a bit steep, but now that I got my head around it, I'm not looking anywhere else.Re: (Score:2)
http://media.tibco.com/flash/gi/tibco_gi_preso.html [tibco.com]
Wait... It's in flash. Guess it's not really a competitor.
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The IDE. And the set of widgets is (imnsho) more consistent and more complete. Accordians, fades, and round corners are swell and all, but grids, trees, text, and forms is where the work gets done. I've tried the kits you mentioned, plus a couple others (jQuery, Ext), and then tried Aptana (ugh, an Eclipse based tool for building browser apps ?) but once I started using GI, I was hooked. Just run it in a browser, a
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FF2 on Fedora 7, so I dunno...
open source, to a point (Score:3, Insightful)
As I understand it they have claimed they will open source parts of the flex sdk, but the flex ide, and the flash runtime plugins will still remain under the same old proprietary license, this is not acceptable. It would be a step backwards if in a few years a significant portion of content on the internet was trapped in proprietary binaries that are difficult to index and likely impossible for many to use a few years down the road. Adobe releases some specs for flash but they are released under terms saying that if you read the specs you are forbidden from writing anything capable of working with flash files. This is almost worse than nothing because even if you create a flash plugin completely independently or with the use of clean room techniques Adobe has the option of claiming that you must have looked at their specs and take you to court in an attempt to kill your project. Also there are many restrictions on the use of the plugin itself, for example you can't use it in many commercial applications such as a flash driven kiosk without first paying Adobe again.
How many years did Linux languish with outdated and extremely buggy versions of the flash plugins? We may have a more or less up to date version of the plugin now but there is no guarantee it will stay that way, a great deal of internet content is trapped in a format that we can only view as long as Adobe feels like letting us, and the architecture support is still pathetic, how is it there is still no native x86-64 support? This should have been done two years ago, to make no mention of the lack of flash9 support on the smaller architectures such as powerpc which effectively locks ps3 users out of browsing most modern flash based websites.
Adobe seems like a big heavy software company that still operates primarily in a 1980's mentality, trying to make the transition to something more modern and web-centric , and they are trying to get some of the glow of open standards and open source to rub off on them, the problem is that they seem to be faking much of it. They talk about openness to get you interested, then you dig into it and find out that there are always critical components they are still keeping under lock and key. I am no fan of flash but it does have its uses, I keep hoping that pressure from Microsoft's silverlight will cause Adobe to really open up the flash spec and allow 3rd parties to create their own implementations of the flash ide and flash runtimes, as pressure from Microsoft's half-assed pdf alternative caused Adobe to release pdf as an iso standard. Though I see no sign of this happening as Adobe still seems to believe they can have their cake and eat it too.
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http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ [adobe.com]
So yeah, expect to pay for the IDE if you get the official one.
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I'm also afraid that the easy availability of Flash for Linux now makes alternatives even harder for people to justify working on. It's a -ton- of work to create an equivalent system, and to do better is even harder. Even OpenLaszlo compiles to Flash as it's main method, with the DHTML4 'compile' method still not ready for use.
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I'm not sure what I am waiting for but http://www.picnik.com/ [picnik.com] doesn't do anything, http://maps.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] offers a few links at the top and nothing else. http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/home.jsp?locale=en_US [harley-davidson.com] does load, but there's a big hole where I guess the flash should be.
This is not a troll, I just wanted to see how good your good sites are, pretty bad is the answer.
Spirit Before Name. Re:GNU/Linux (Score:2)
Adobe has done a nice job of releasing specs and porting software to the GNU/Linux world but they do not believe in software freedom. You can legitimately complain that their releases are late, non free and patent encumbered. The lack of freedom is most evident in their readers, which won't let you cut and paste if the author foolishly wishes to raise themselves above the already insane restrictions of copyright law. Until they liberate their code and repudiate software patents they should not pretend to
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I'm sorry, I'm not getting this. Can you explain how you can "legitimately" complain about something Adobe does or doesn't do? Unless someone is forcing you to use their software at gunpoint, that is.
Adobe has no obligation to cater to your "freedom" and release their source code just because you think it would be nice for them to do so.
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That pretty much already exists for YouTube, unless someone's found a way to make it go into iPhone mode on a PC browser. But that only worked because Apple basically strongarmed them into providing mp4 files, instead of Flash.