Ok, so remove the Design View, and whats going to happen? new guys who is deciding wich framework to use, will look at Flex and will see no advantage. Theyll choose another one with a visual framework as Sencha or any other one. So, Flash will not invest on the browser anymore... and that will reduce a lot of Flex and Flash programers. But then you take of the visual enviroment, witch is the way most of people start using Flex as development tool... (when get advanced uses more code mode - exept who is designer/coder like me and other guys here) and you will have finally the death of the greatest software in the internet history. Yeah, Adobe is killing the best software internet had since today. It was better to sell it back to Macromedia! Hey man... i take a look at Amethist and i didnt see it as an Design View... its an advanced code view, isnt it? ill take a look more clearly this week. Is it an plugin for flex?

S

SapphireSteel

Participating Frequently

Yu asked about the Amethyst design view. Amethst does full drag-and-drop design for Flex 3 or Flex 4. You drag-and-drop controls, double-click and code the auto-generated event-handlers (just like C#). Here's a short example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLXLJhdUbYw Currently we only support drag-and-drop for Flex or AIR. In future we will provide similar features for stadard Flash projects (currently Amethyst suppprts coding and debugging for Flash and ActionScript but Design view is restricted to Flex and AIR). This video gives you a more complete overview of Amethyst: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtlphFmY-HY

P

pauland

Participating Frequently

Is it a fair comment to say that the Sapphire Design View only supports a subset of the layout options available within the Flex Framework?

I'm guessing there's no support in the design view for states and constraint based layouts, for example?

S

SapphireSteel

Participating Frequently

For those people who do want a design view, you might like to know that we'll soon be anniouncing an extended design view (more not less! ) for Flash and Flex in the next version of Amethyst for Visual Studio. Watch our blog for details: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Blog

Huw

jacograaff

Known Participant

SAPPHIRE STEEL - since I do love the speed and stability of visual studio I will defenitely look into your product. I have looked at it previously - about 2 years ago - but as far as I can remember it did not keep up to date with flex-framework developments - some components were not available soon enough after a new release of flex-framework - and so I stuck it out with flashbuilder for a project I did back then. But I will follow your dev. very closely - because I do dev. on win platform and Visual Studio is a stable fast IDE...

PAULAND - thanks for being so gracious, The main reason I would not have a splitview running in FB while coding is because of the lag, slowness, etc.. of the designview - because of that - yes - it can be a hinderence - but sometimes I will overlook it - Again - Microsofts Blend was done exceptionally well - the way I can just click right into the core basic primitives that makes up a button - No flash, catalyst, illustrator, etc.. bypass - I can just get right to that rectangle that defines the gradient of a button and dynamically link the 3 rgba colors of the gradient to a cascading stylesheet - e.g. buttonHighlightCol, buttDarkCol , etc.. create a stylesheet resource out of it and link the gradient - and then re-use it all over for consistancy - have realtime wysiwyg feedback - {myBackGradient}

beautifull synergy between wysiwyg and coding from the guys that brought us DHTML in the first place - So hoped our beloved flex/FB would copy that (Defraga, and then we do have some if it since ability to create rects etc.. in code - but not to the extend MSoft allows us)

Anyway - Yes we shoudl "just get on with it" - but as a paying customer that invests years in understanding a platform, sell it to customers, influence the purchase thereoff - even if my loyalty takes effort to shift - I have a strong message for Adobe: A very strong message -

You are dissapointing us and we will take our money and loyalty somewhere else

jacograaff

Known Participant

I am a designer/developer - I do use the design view extensively. And yes I am more than worth my salt and more. For me, being able to have immediate visual feedback is absolutely necessary. I don't like coding "blind". I have had the opportunity to work Microsoft Blend - Visual Studio since 2007 - It really is what I hoped flex would be. The best of both worlds. As front-end interface developer designer I could work on the exact same source-code, submitting to SVN on a regular basis together with the software engineers developing the backend and SDK. Blend allowed me controle over the primitive shapes that makes up a component. This allowed extreme customisation and optimisation. The wysiwyg view is an absolute crucial part of the process (e.g. do I want this rectangle to have 5px margins or 4, do the shadow work better with a 10 px falloff or a 8px falloff, do I want pixel snap on or off [whish flash had that] - which does look and work different than the photoshop one so I DO HAVE TO DESIGN in the wysiwyg as well)

Yes sure, I do go through a phase designing in Illustrator and Photoshop, but putting the components together takes time. I do not simply import flat artwork and then wrap them in some appropriate container. I build components up using multiple primitive shapes which gets re-purposed and targeted for various states, subtle animations, color-changes and has to comply to it's parent-component's rescaling capabilities. During that phase I do NOT want to continuously recompile. (although I would sometimes create a separate project just to test a specific component that can only be fully viewed after recompiled).

The excuse of "all good coders don't use the design view anyway" is a cop out. I can understand if Adobe says

1) we did not have the resources to do it decently (like Microsoft Blend)

2) we simply do not put the resources in to hire clever enough developers to create a decent tool

But a statement like it's preferable to work only blindly in code is simply wrong and naive of the state of art of dev. tools. Maybe for a dos-like interface or win-32 forms style interface only using stock-standard layout and components.

The biggest advantage of Microsoft Blend is being able to have split view open - I do this with Flashbuilder as well although it is slower and more buggy than Blend - I would write the markup and see updates realtime, switch over to Visual Studio that has the project open in the background for some serious code-completion capabilities - then miss my wysiwyg view - and switch rigth back to Blend.

Why am I using flash-builder/flex - if it was not for the fact that Microsofts wpf-framework only works fully on Win-OS or a subset of it as a silverlight plugin on fewer platforms than flash - I would have used Microsoft. The reason using flash is because it can be deployed on so many platforms - consistently (not like the html4 and now 5 chaos) - It has powerful interactive and multimedia capabilities.

My HTML works exactly the same way - for certain core complex components I will code and have a wysiwyg open as well for better navigation, more inuitive decision making and less time spend going backwards and forwards between compiling/running in the browser - but with the sad state of wysiwyg of dreamweaver unluckily I have to swithc more often (not because I am a more "CLEVER" developer)

Summary - I will use flash/flex only if there is no alternative because of this decision - Flash was supposed to be a creative environment to create highly interactive and creative applications/content for multiple platforms.

Thanks Adobe , I have used Macromedia director since 1993 - You managed to kill that off and now you are messing with flash - It could have been so much more. You simply lack the vision and we are stuck with the limitations, inconsistency, long-development time of HTML5 and a messy array of tools to try and make it usefull.

Whish Microsoft had the vision to make wpf work on all platforms....

pbeltranl

Participating Frequently

The Adobe's position is clear: reducing the Flex/AIR budget/investment.

I think most developers want to improve professional against amateur features. This is what is now happening: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/air3-2/

You don't want to hear what Adobe is saying you: "Do you want to develop form based apps? Move to Phonegap http://phonegap.com/"

Adobe, please, remove from Builder all those useless stuff: +1.000.000

N

NepoL

Participant

Please don't remove this feature, is one of the main reasons I invested in Flash Builder. I make a lot of apps for Small Business, I can afford to produce a lot of single apps at a low cost thanks to features like Design View which help me to save time, so money.

If they do this I don't think I would continue to use this framework which I love. I hope someone would hear us cause I know I'm not the only one who feels like this.

daslichtAuthor

Known Participant

I feel exactly the same. But hey, if Adobe whants it this way, lets just invest in other companies than Adobe...

@pbeltranl

>form based apps

With DesignView and Catalyst a Team of Developers and Designers can do much MORE than Form apps ...

>Phonegap

Since we lost our confidence, we will NEVER touch any other Technology from Adobe anymore.

P

pauland

Participating Frequently

Get a grip, guys, this is about the rise of HTML 5 not the evil Adobe.

You can continue to cry over spilt milk or just get on with it.

Use Flex where appropriate, HTML 5 where appropriate.

Any Flex developer worth their salt doesn't need design view.

K

karkara_

Participating Frequently

When i read that answer i could not leave without replying.

What does it mean when even an Adobe employee tell us thats "unfortunately true"?

I think its because they know that is a good functionality they´re removing. If you need to do an state of the art application, where the visual is very important, this topic seams very disapointing. I mean... thinking that i ll need to run the application one thousands of time just to get the correct layout dont seams intelligent for me.

More than that, whats worring me more is the fact that Adobe seams to be lost and their objectives are not clear at this time for me. While Mac build an Design View for Xcode4, https://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/whats-new.html#interface-builder , Adobe is discontinuing some tecnologies and softwares without telling us the reason. I just wanted to know why they are taking that out... and tell us whats their next steps. How can i choose a Flex platform withou knowing the directions that its going to take.

I´m starting to study HTML5 and others SDKs like Sencha because as an owner of a web buissiness Adobe is a big interrogation point at this moment for me. I mean, i really dont know if in the next year Flash Builder will exists. How can i hire AS3 guys with that unstable scenario? Ok, i hired the AS3 guys, but how the Design guys will design interfaces? theyll have to learn code? i mean... designers use visual elements to do the thinks, and thats why i choose Flash Builder as development kit: designers uses the Design View to make the layout, and coders uses the Code Mode... this looks like intelligent for me. Whats going to be now?

daslichtAuthor

Known Participant

There are alternatives for Flash Builder which keep containing a Design View.

e.g intellyJ with Design View Plugin, or Amethyst.

Hopefully the Community will come up with a alternative for Catalyst or all .

The best would be if someone develop a IDE with Design view AND built in animator , something like Catalyst and Flash Builder in on package.

That would make sharing projects between Developers and Designers even more easy, productive and FUN!

@karkara+

I feel exactly the same,

Developing Things with Javascipt and HTML is just even more bizarre than coding a GUI using Flex.

The Catalyst Flex Workflow is so much more productive than any JS based workflow today.

One interesting candidate of the Javascript world is Wakanda which is Free(not as Adobe or $encha Tools) but still quite buggy (its beta)

But I am optimistic that this will change very soon.

However nothing comes close to Flex/Catalyst/Adobe Suite Workflow at the moment (stupid Adobe) IMO (I bet not only my opinion)

S

SapphireSteel

Participating Frequently

If you need a Flex visual designer and youi are on Windows, bear in mind that we are actively continuing the support and development of the Amethsyt visual designer for Flash/Flex: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Products/amethyst-ide/Amethyst-Product-Page

daslichtAuthor

Known Participant

Amethyst looks nice ! I havent tried it yet since I ever got Flash Builder for free. (Student version)

daslichtAuthor

Known Participant

Just Funny that anyone(Google GWT, Google Android, Vaadin, Wakanda, Morfik, Expression Blend for HTML....) else is moving toward a visual editor and Adobe is about to drop it.

F

Formability_co_uk

Participant

I've got to say it's very disappointing to hear that they're removing the design view. It's a very valuable tool that saves a lot of time in development. Like most people I do most of the development in the code view, however the design view is integral because it shows you instant feedback on positioning of elements, and means you can finetune positioning in the design view which is a lot easier than continually compiling the program. This is especially useful when you're using multiple states i.e. portrait, landscape, tablet, phone. I was actually hoping that they'd expand the feature and add in support for state groups.

Being reliant on design view is a bad thing but it's still a very useful tool to improve efficiency.

Very disappointing move imo.

H

hferreira.80@gmail.com

Inspiring

I prefer investments in Flash and AIR (specially in AIR Mobile performance) and code support for every new major version from the Flex after it be available in the Apache.

H

hferreira.80@gmail.com

Inspiring

I agree with this decision and should be made sooner, so the Adobe not reached the point that came.

The Flex SDK and Flash Builder (except the very poor performance) are too perfect and this is also a flaw in the commercial point of view.

I develop in Flex for 3 years and only used the designer in very begging.

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