Friday, December 03, 2004
Integrating Macromedia Flex with Java
Though it doesn't say anything new, its good to see sites like O'Reilly's onJava.com talking about products like Flex. Despite sales success general support for Flex from Java heavyweights IBM seems to have been slippling.
"A RIA gives the user a thick client with extended capabilities not available in browsers today. The most common RIA clients for J2EE are Java and Flash. When it comes to developing large, data-centric applications, RIAs are generally strong . Several solutions are available for developing Rich Internet Applications including JDNC (JDesktop Network Components), Laszlo, Thinlet, Java Web Start, and Macromedia Flex."
Integrating Macromedia Flex with Java, Mark Eagle
Something like Flex Builder, although seemingly clever leaves a script coder like myself a bit cold. It would be nice to see Flex related tools available in a more familiar environment like Eclipse. Surprisingly, IBM have dropped their Flex plugin and introduced a Laszlo plugin of all things.
It seems crazy that IBM and Macromedia have dropped the ball on this given the excitement late last year. It's taken less than a year for alphaworks site to drop the Flex plugin completely. Admittedly the previous Eclipse plugin had very limited distribution as a bundle with the Webfear toolkit.
I've got my fingers crossed that someone, somewhere is working on an open source distribution of a Flex Eclipse plugin.
Posted by modius at 12:38 PM | Permalink
Trackback: http://blog.daemon.com.au/cgi-bin/dmblog/mt-tb.cgi/257
I have to say I was a bit disappointed at this year's MAX when I noticed IBM was completely absent from the conference.
Last year, they came on full force in support of both RIAs and FLEX. To see that they have cooled off as much as they have leaves me wondering...
Posted by: Rob Brooks-Bilson on December 3, 2004 03:49 PM
Geoff
We're having Flex development success using Eclipse and the oXygen plugin:
http://www.rocketboots.com.au/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=29748A02-E081-51EF-A76F3A9D8308A716
The only thing that this combination does allow us to do over Flex Builder is a GUI for exact positioning of UI components within a Canvas tag.
Posted by: Andrew Muller on December 3, 2004 04:23 PM
The Oxygen plugin really only provides a degree of code insight -- plus it costs. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the superb job the folks at CFEclipse have been doing.
Posted by: Geoff Bowers on December 3, 2004 04:32 PM
Yes it does cost money but using Flex's XSD or schema oXygen on Eclipse gives you MXML tag names as you type, dynamic tag insight (ie will only show attributes of a tag that you've as yet not used), tag completion & a degree of tag validation (checks that the tags are well formed).
Had there been a free equivelent of oXygen I'd have used it, but as a Mac user there's no version of Flex Builder currently available.
Posted by: Andrew Muller on December 3, 2004 05:09 PM
Perhaps it's related to this recent news http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo
Posted by: CXL on December 5, 2004 03:22 AM
I have to say I was a bit disappointed at this year's MAX when I noticed IBM was completely absent from the conference.
Last year, they came on full force in support of both RIAs and FLEX. To see that they have cooled off as much as they have leaves me wondering...
Posted by: Rob Brooks-Bilson on December 3, 2004 03:49 PM
Geoff
We're having Flex development success using Eclipse and the oXygen plugin:
http://www.rocketboots.com.au/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=29748A02-E081-51EF-A76F3A9D8308A716
The only thing that this combination does allow us to do over Flex Builder is a GUI for exact positioning of UI components within a Canvas tag.
Posted by: Andrew Muller on December 3, 2004 04:23 PM
The Oxygen plugin really only provides a degree of code insight -- plus it costs. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the superb job the folks at CFEclipse have been doing.
Posted by: Geoff Bowers on December 3, 2004 04:32 PM
Yes it does cost money but using Flex's XSD or schema oXygen on Eclipse gives you MXML tag names as you type, dynamic tag insight (ie will only show attributes of a tag that you've as yet not used), tag completion & a degree of tag validation (checks that the tags are well formed).
Had there been a free equivelent of oXygen I'd have used it, but as a Mac user there's no version of Flex Builder currently available.
Posted by: Andrew Muller on December 3, 2004 05:09 PM
Perhaps it's related to this recent news http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo
Posted by: CXL on December 5, 2004 03:22 AM