Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha

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.'"

Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it

[Aladrin]

It's an IDE for building apps with Adobe Flex. It was quite apparently to me, even though I've never even considered using Flex. If you don't know what Adobe Flex is, and don't care enough to look it up, why did you bother with the article?

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."

Eclipse ain't all the Adobe FLOSS lovin'...

[SpzToid]

Adobe is giving Drupal some serious loving too, and that's also of interest for the FLOSS CMS folks, no doubt.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/drupal.html [adobe.com]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it

[Corporate Troll]

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.

Not open source, though.

[TuringTest]

For those of you with memories, this is related (but not equal) to previous announcement by Adobe to open source the Flex engine [slashdot.org]. As explicitly stated then [adobe.com], though:

Adobe Flex Builder, the Eclipse-based IDE, is not part of the open source announcement.

Adobe Flex Builder for Linux is published under a standard restrictive license [adobe.com].

Re:FlexBuilder is okay but...

[joshv]

Flex builder 3 (currently in beta) will offer most of the missing code intelligence features such as refactoring, and formatting, and will dramatically improve code hinting.

Re:Eclipse ain't all the Adobe FLOSS lovin'...

[SpzToid]

Note: This tutorial is based on an example by Alexander Crugnola, in the example, Flex with AMFPHP. Please note that Alexander Crugnola's example is not specific to Drupal.

Okay, maybe that's not serious enough to be called Drupal lovin', but this is [drupal.org]:

Yesterday the Adobe Flex team launched a Drupal powered application that showcases applications built with Adobe Flex. The new Flex Showcase is online now at http://flex.org/showcase_app [flex.org].

The backend of the application uses Drupal, along with the Services, AMFPHP, Vote up / down and CCK modules. The front end of the application is written in Adobe Flex, with custom components written in Flash.

Drupal was chosen for the application because we needed a PHP framework that supported user registration and management, content management, categorization and tagging, and comments. Drupal was the best choice for these services, and with the work that Scott Nelson had already done with the Services and AMFPHP modules, the choice was easy.

Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it

[Skuld-Chan]

Its actually any browser that supports Flash 9 plugin (which exist for Solaris/Linux/Mac/Windows). I've seen Flex apps run on Firefox/Flash 9 on Solaris for example.

Re:free?

[alex_ndc]

It will probably be the same as for the Windows version:
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

[oni]

Their pricing model is sort of similar to what MS is doing with .NET. You can actually get a command-line compiler and build flex apps for free, just like you can compile to .net bytecode for free. What Adobe charges $500 for is the IDE (there is a standalone that's based on Eclipse and an Eclipse plugin). So what you're really paying for is code introspection, code behind, a debugger, and a design view (it seems that the design view doesn't work in the linux version).

There's also an educational version for around $40 and some kind of subscription service similar to microsoft select. You can also get a 30-day trial, which should be enough to get you up to speed on the language, then you could move to the free stuff if you wanted.

Like other client-side technologies, Flex makes liberal use of web services, and that's cool - Another thing you get if you actually buy Flex is something called ColdFusion remoting. This is a way of integrating with Adobe's coldfusion server. You build a SOAP web service in coldfusion, but if you have CF-Remoting then you can talk to that service with a different protocol that SOAP. Supposedly, it's faster because it's not using XML. But you're not locked into it because the service is still available as a standard web service, complete with WSDL and all that. Sounds intriguing. I haven't really checked it out.

Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it

[bigpat]

"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 ever.