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aligned2009
Participating Frequently
November 9, 2011
Question

Is Flex/Flash Builder dead?

  • November 9, 2011
  • 12 replies
  • 36532 views

I don't understand today's announcement. Is Flex/Flash Builder dead, or does desktop development continue, or do I continue developing and everything will magically work in mobile devices with AIR?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    12 replies

    SourceSkyBoxer
    SourceSkyBoxer
    Known Participant
    September 1, 2015

    I don't think because Flash Builder is not dead. For features are good. But I can not understand why does Adobe Air not work with Webgl if I am using TreeJS / Html5 than it looks like Html5 Games move to Air. I missed time of features of Html / Javascript. Why do you not develop ane for Html5 / Javascript for Adobe Air 18/19. TreeJs is good WebGL Framework for Game Engine with Html5. I am very hopeful for that. Thanks best greeting from Germany.

    M
    mlprouty
    Participant
    August 20, 2015

    I tried to work with HTML5 in Flash Builder. This capability is supposed to be available. The video tag did not work. Looking for support, I could find nothing. Things seem to date back to the early 2010's. For me, Flash Builder is dead.

    P
    pauland
    Participating Frequently
    November 16, 2011

    Take a look here for a rather more expansive and positive explanation of Adobe's plans:

    http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html

    O
    orgreeno
    Participant
    November 15, 2011

    Unfortunately, perception is reality. The perception is that Flash is going away and the ball is in Adobe's court to convince people otherwise.

    A
    Anonymous
    November 16, 2011

    I don't see why you think that mobile is a waste. I develop in Flex for mobile and am having good results. I had some frustrations with learning the Flex mobile platform which I think are items that Adobe will fix going forward, but now that I know it, I don't see me giving it up for a long time. I learned Java 10 years ago. I still have found no reason to learn C# (even though I'd like to some day... I have no REASON to and thus I do not). The same will likely be true for me with Flex. I have an RIA that compiles to all platforms I use, the result is excellent and I know it works. Why would I dump it now? Adobe has a full year (at least) to gain many others like me and I'd bet that even after HTML5 is fully being adopted there will still be plenty of relevance for Flex Mobile.

    A
    Anonymous
    November 15, 2011

    Maybe I'm alone, but honestly I couldn't care less about Flash on mobile.  And given the much higher cost of supporting Flash mobile vs Flash desktop, with mobile wasting Adobe resources that should have been going towards Flex and Flash desktop, good riddance.  The bad thing is that the 4.5 release (mobile dev features?) was a misstep and a waste.  That, I am a little ticked off about.  I could have told Adobe's clueless MBAs or whoever made that call that it was idiotic, years ago.  All those resources could have gotten us an HTML5 compiler, or whatever else by now, which would boost Flash Builder sales.

    But really, who needs Flex on mobile anyway? Those things can barely run any app, and most of them are simplistic UIs with no serious complexity.  Who cares about mobile Flash!  What's Flash's desktop deployment rate today?  Where I work, it's 100%...

    Adobe temporarily got caught up in the mobile platform hype, and just now are starting to come to their senses.  The decision was correct, although I'd agree that the PR aspect of the decision couldn't have been worse.

    -
    -BoNzO-
    Participant
    November 12, 2011

    Yes Flex is dead unfortunately. Not because it was inferior though; In the end Adobe just had to jump on the HTML5 bandwagon full time because it's apparently what customers want now; Not because it makes more sense to use HTML5 for enterprise development (lol, it sounds funny just to write it, try it)  Good luck to all devs who will stick to "web" development and have to put up with a much more flawed technology.

    A
    Anonymous
    November 12, 2011

    First i really feel bad about the millions of AS3/Flex devs out there. The Flash platform is really going down right now. Atleast when it comes to enterprise applications.

    If you are writing games you should be good for some time.

    I remember coming to this forum a year or two before saying that future of web development will be tools like GWT.

    At Emitrom we saw the potential of what can be done we both platform. We also knew that HTML5 soon or later will come strong so we had to prepare

    our customer withs a nice transition possibility in the case Flex/Flash will die.

    With that in mind we create  Gwt4Flex http://www.emitrom.com/gwt4flex.

    Because the project leverages GWT switching to full HTML5 would be easier as changing the implementation of the UI layer for platform where Flash is not supported.

    The backend code would remain the same. Something you cant do with a AS3 based Flex project.

    Unfortunatly the reaction here was not that great. We wrote tons of emails to Adobe asking them for support. We never got an answer. Well actually only one Engineer answered me but he could not do much. What he told me is that he thinks the idea is  great but i should not expect a lot of help from the evangelist at Adobe since they makes thier living promoting AS3 development. Java(GWT) does not fit in there even if it moves the Flex platform more towards HTML5.

    A couple of years later It looks like i was not that wrong after all.

    Atleast today we are happy to tell our customer that they might have to implement a new UI layer in their application but 90% of their code based will remain the same.

    Flex we will miss you.

    S
    supersonicecho
    Participating Frequently
    November 12, 2011

    http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html

    Someone explain to me how I am misreading the situation and this isn't terrible news for flex developers....

    Y
    Yozef0
    Known Participant
    November 12, 2011

    There was an important & frank live session last night on tinychat. There were around 200 developers, and notable evangelists in the Flash Flex arena.

    One questoin that kept on rising (typed it on several occasion) but did not get a concrete answer is :

    Would Flex export to HTML5 & JS?

    Many techy evangelists said that it is technically possible. Now I am sure many, many of us are willing to Learn 'a little' changes in the way they develop, certainly not knowing JS and HTML like the way we know Flex & Actionscript today (not even sure it's possible to get out HTML what Flash& Flex Components can do), but to have the ability for Flex to export to Swf, Air and HTML5.

    But the Questions still remains not concretely answered,and Adobe Must inform its developers about their intentions with Flex!

    P
    pauland
    Participating Frequently
    November 12, 2011

    Would Flex export to HTML5 & JS?

    Given the inability of the Flex team to fully port all the mx component functionality to Spark, I can't see Adobe managing another port of Flex to HTML5/JS, particularly when they are laying off people and transferring development effort into HTML5. Adobe is effectively pushing Flex development to a seperate entity with fewer developers.

    A
    Anonymous
    November 11, 2011

    Also, if people are concerned about this issue, why not go to Adobe Ideas and vote for the Flex HTML5 compiler feature request?  Downvote all the higher "ideas" to prioritize this one if you're that concerned.

    http://ideas.adobe.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=975F47A1-B925-4456-89DB-3BEFB1DA7780&idea_id=3AAF1D0A-A4E2-41AB-B55C-A13942CD4E19#comments

    I'd like stuff like multithreading and better printing too, but if you're convinced HTML5 is needed to preserve the SDK...

    A
    Anonymous
    November 10, 2011

    The real test will be what Adobe delivers in the next "major" release of Flash Builder.

    Flash Builder 4.5 was all about mobile Flex apps.

    If Flash Builder 5 fails to impress, RoR...

    drkstr_1
    drkstr_1
    Inspiring
    November 10, 2011

    Personally, I would really love to see Actionscript/Flex become more of an abstraction language like CoffeeScript and/or Google WebKit. I could certainly justify using Flex if it had the ability to output to both low level machine code for native apps or HTML/JS for the web (with the obvious caveats for supported features in "web mode").

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