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atriaforever
atriaforever
Participant
July 31, 2017
Question

Migrate Flex 3 web app to AIR app with flat design

  • July 31, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3857 views

Back in 2007, we started the development of a Flex application whose main characteristics are:

  • it is an administration tool, no animation here
  • it is basically a set of list screens with corresponding add/update screens
  • each of these add/update screens use different tabs with usual data oriented components on each tab, such as datafield, radio button, dropdown list...

Now that Flash will officially die in 2020, it is time for us to migrate this application from the current code base which is:

  • Flex 3 for Flash and ActionScript (a lot!) on the client
  • Java objects on the server accessed from the client using Flex remote objects

I have the following requirements for this migration:

  • use a technology which runs on a browser or as an app on PC, Mac and tablets, and maybe smartphones (not mandatory as this app is an admin tool not to be used on the go)
  • deliver modern UI (flat design expected)
  • and the most important: which offers the lowest migration cost and delay, as we have a huge Flex3 MXML and AS3 code base to migrate

Please tell me:

  • Is targeting AIR a viable solution for this migration?
  • What are the difficulties we may face during this migration?
  • Where can we find documentation to help on such a migration?
  • What resources (themes, skins, other) are available to give an AIR app a nice and modern flat design? Default theme really look outdated.
  • Any other point you may consider of interest in this context
This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
July 31, 2017

Only the plugin will be end of life, and it's the end of 2020, so at the earliest you have until January 1st 2021.

Are you able to run your current application in Flash Player? If you are then you can create a projector version of the application, and that can run on Mac or PC as a standalone application. You wouldn't need to change anything, and it would only take a few seconds to create.

If you did make an AIR application it would effectively be the same thing, the first SWF you need to see would be what you would publish, and all of the other files that are needed would be added to the application bundle. That might take a few minutes to create.

So, depending on what your application is like you may well have almost no work at all to make it work as a standalone application.

atriaforever
atriaforeverAuthor
Participant
July 31, 2017

Hi, thanks for quick feedback. I have some questions though.

  • What do you mean exactly by "Are you able to run your current application in Flash Player?". Do you mean the Flash Player provided as a browser plugin or included in Google Chrome? If so, yes, the app runs in any web browser with the Flash plugin. If no, please me more specific.
  • I googled a bit but could not find how to build a "projector" file from Flex. Do I need another software to build this 'projector file'? Which ones?
  • Are they any limitation on "projector" app compared to AIR app?
Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
July 31, 2017

Good follow up questions!

By Flash Player I meant the standalone applications. Suppose you're looking at a SWF file, and you double click it, what application gets opened? If Windows has nothing for you, look at this page as a way to get the standalone players:

Download Adobe Flash Player 26 Beta for Desktops - Adobe Labs

If you do get it opened in Flash Player, there should be an option to save the SWF as a projector.

An AIR application has better access to the file system, and it can also show a web view. But first see if double clicking on your initial SWF does open Flash Player, and if the rest of your application works correctly.

Is the application top secret? If you could show a link to it, or upload a zip file of everything, I could try making it as a projector.

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