Flex, Ajax, JavaFX, Silverlight — our view on current state of affairs
Posted by sharpstyle on August 24, 2007
We were asked to comment on the recent offerings from Sun and Microsoft that are aimed to compete with Flex. Here is our current opinion:
While there are many excellent technologies on the server-side (.Net, PHP, Ruby, Java, etc), we believe that Flex is currently the technology of choice for delivering the client-side implementation of Rich Internet Applications. That doesn’t necessarily mean that client-side of every RIA has to be implemented fully in Flex – usually it makes sense to combine Flex with Ajax to deliver the best performance where it matters. With Flex applications running in ubiquitous Flash Payer in the browser and in Adobe Air on desktop on multiple operating systems, Flex developers can leverage the same skills to deliver cross-browser and cross-platform solutions. These solutions usually utilize highly efficient methods of communication (AMF/Flash Remoting) with the server that have proven themselves over many generations of Flash, thus delivering much higher performance than industry standard SOAP/XML Web Services. It is also worth mentioning that current version of Flex (Flex 2) was officially released over a year ago in June 2006 with a rather significant update released in January 2007 and Flex 3 currently in beta.
There are a number of competing/supplemental technologies that should be mentioned and explored.
Ajax combines a number of technologies based on various JavaScript frameworks. Because of JavaScript restrictions in terms of performance and security model, Ajax is best used together with Flex. While a large number of Ajax frameworks provide flexibility, such things as maintainability of projects over long development cycles and availability of resources with appropriate skills need to be considered.
JavaFX is a recent announcement from Sun and it looks to compete with Flex in providing yet another framework for building RIAs. While there is a rather limited information available at this time, Sun’s inability to establish Java as a client-side technology in the past, combined with introduction of another “java flavor” (JavaFX Script) that developers need to learn, leads us to believe that this initiative will not be a serious competitor to Flex in the near future.
Sliverlight is Microsoft’s endeavor into extending its Windows Presentation Framework into non-IE browsers and potentially non-Microsoft operating systems (currently there are no plans to support cross-platform desktop applications). While Silverlight benefits from being a subset of the Microsoft’s core framework, it is not a framework that is currently widely used. There are a number of positive things going for Silverlight: Microsoft recognized the importance of supporting cross-browser, cross-platform RIA development and made it available to a very large community of Microsoft developers. We also know how effective Microsoft is at marketing its products. We certainly see Silverlight as a competitor to Flex in the future, but don’t know how close that future is.
SharpStyle Labs saw a need in the marketplace to allow .Net developers to integrate Flash/Flex projects into the next generation of Rich Internet Application built using Visual Studio. SharpStyle Labs is currently shipping SharpStyle Neutron – Visual Studio add-in for ActionScript 2 development. SharpStyle Labs is also in a private beta of SharpStyle Neutron FLX, which allows development of Flex/ActionScript 3 projects within Visual Studio. With these offerings, SharpStyle Labs provides the opportunity to develop RIAs using a leading server-side technology (.NET) and a leading client-side technology (Flash/Flex) all within a common IDE. For more information please visit: http://neutron.sharpstyle.com.
Mike Grushin
Partner, CTO
August 26, 2007 at 7:53 am
i believe SilverLight will be more a real RIA solution sooner than later. I have been learning SilverLight for the last 3 months and all i can say is that it really delivers from a UX perspective. As a microsoft and adobe/macromedia tools guy the development and design tools for silverlight “just makes sense”, it is more a RAD tool than flash/flex (from experience). This is the time for any design / development team to build up internal SilverLight capability, the technology is now pretty much bedded down for 1.0 and it’s features are pretty good for version 1.0.
From experience, the types of RIA’s i build i would recommend SilverLight over FLEX. And i work on alot of sizable RIA projects (3mth-6mth engagements with budgets in the 6 figures sometimes 7 figures)
August 26, 2007 at 11:38 am
Thanks for your feedback.
I didn’t want to make my post even longer so I stayed away from discussing such things as Microsoft Expressions product line and how successful they will be able in gettng Graphic Designers to adapt it. I understand the proposed benefits of seamless transition of designs created in Expressions to Visual Studio but I am somewhat cautious about the uptake.
My other concern is adaption of Silverlight ActiveX control. Corporations and a lot of consumers are very security-oriented. I think consumers were trained not to click on any “would you like to install” popups.
I also see value in Air — building the same code that runs in the browser and on cross-platform desktop.
With that said, i think resolving above issues is just a matter of time — and Microsoft is certainly known for significantly improving their products with each version.
Mike
P.S. It looks like you combine graphic design skills with coding abilities — that is a rather uncommon and I think it plays a role in your understanding of Silverlight benefits