Apr 26

Flex opensourced: the battle of the giants. Towards a new Rich Client?

AJAX, ClientTechnologies, Technologystefano

So, just few days after Microsoft announced its SilverLight platform, Adobe answered making Flex an Open Source platform. I suggest you have a look at Scoble’s page “Adobe opensources Flex“, especially for the two videos he recorded with some of the Adobe thinking heads.

Wow! How things are changing fast!

There is one consideration that I want to make here. Now, both Adobe and Microsoft have the following approach to their flagship UI technology:

Microsoft Adobe
Express - Entry Point SilverLight Flex
Full Product Vista -
Windows Presentation
Foundation		 Apollo
  • An “entry point” offer, freely available or even Open Sourced, which paves the road to the flagship product.
  • In both cases, the technology behind is the same (MXML/ActionScript for Adobe and XAML for Microsoft). In both cases, the technology behind is Declarative!
  • In both cases, the Entry Point offer is helping making more popular, especially with developers, the technology, so that it can be more used as the basis for building applications using the Full Product version.
  • in both cases, the Entry Point makes a tactical use of the Browser (at least, in the Full Product version the browser is not playing the important role that we are used to)
  • in both cases, AJAX is used as a programming approach instead than as the overarching foundation.

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