What is Adobe Flex? Is it just Flash II?

Question

Question

Alright, I\'m confused by all the buzzwords and press release bingo going on.

• What is the relationship between flash and flex:
  • Rep

Answer 1

Flex is a collection of Technologies, Tools and Frameworks for building cross platform Rich Internet Applications.

Answer 2

Flex is a framework FlexBuilder is an IDE (in an attempt to resolve the confusion between the 2, adobe is renaming FlexBuilder to FlashBuilder)

if you do not know what a Framework is:

Flex is to Flash as what CodeIgniter is to PHP

or like what .net is.

I like to think of a framework as extending a language like you would extend a class in OOP.

Answer 3

Flash is a programming language rather similar to JavaScript but with support for static types.

Flex is a flash library that is intended to help people program in Flash on a much higher level.

It may be helpful to some to think about this as Flex over Flash being like MFC over C++.

Answer 4

Flex Builder 3 --> Flash Builder 4, even though you use it for Flex. You can also use it for Flash. If you really want to learn about all this stuff, you should just buy a veteran lunch for a day because it will save you MONTHS. Adobe makes some cool products, but is also well-known to be a lazy company, and this leads to extremely poor documentation. Unless you are a fan of "livedocs," which is a term Adobe coined to describe "slow and bloated HTML."

Answer 5

In very simple terms, Flex technology uses MXML to create applications. MXML is analogous to HTML and Flash components is analogous to something like form elements.

MXML basically allows you to specify what Flash components (such as a table, dropdown list, or something custom that you build in Flash) go on an application screen.

This is a very simplified answer, but that's how I tend to explain Flex.

(Flex Builder is an environment for you to develop Flex apps and Flash apps)

Answer 6

Flex and Flash have different target audiences. Flex is more geared towards developers where as Flash is more geared towards designers and artists.