FLEX released; Laszlo goes free
Just to add to the noise: Macromedia FLEX has been released. Use FLEX to generate (server-side) Flash applications. FLEX revolves around MXML, an XML dialect developed by Macromedia to describe Flash components that form an application.
The FLEX homepage offers a ton of documents on how to use the technology.
My personal favourite is the Samples Explorer. An application created with FLEX that enables you to browse through dozens of FLEX applications and view the MXML code used to create the sample app.
To give you an idea of what a typical MXML file looks like, the code below is used to create a datagrid displaying the contents of an XML file:
- <mx:Application xmlns:mx=“http://www.macromedia.com/2003/mxml”>
- <mx:Model id=“employeeModel” source=“../assets/employees.xml”/>
- <mx:DataGrid height=“300″ widthFlex=“1″ heightFlex=“1″ dataProvider=“{employeeModel.employee}”/>
- </mx:Application>
The sample code above would result in the following Flash application:
FLEX has been in development for some time now and that process has no doubt been closely monitored by Laszlo Systems, a company that already offers a product similar to FLEX, namely the Laszlo Presentation Server. Interestingly, as Owen van Dijk already mentioned, Laszlo has recently released a Non-Commercial version of their Presentation Server. It looks like they’re trying to get a stronger foothold for their product, now that Macromedia is entering the market with FLEX.
It is hard to say which one these products is better. FLEX features, not surprisingly, close integration with the MX product line using the (to be released) Brady MXML editor and relies heavily on the Flash MX 2004 Component framework. But FLEX also has some serious pricing, making larger companies its primary target. Laszlo on the other hand seems to be attempting to persuade smaller companies to adopt their software by offering non-commercial, low-cost and enterprise editions.
This is going to be an interesting to market to keep an eye on.
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