Is Flex/AIR a dying technology?

[RandomReado]

I develop Flex/AIR applications and need to know if this is a dying technology and whether there's any point continuing to develop on this platform?

[artguate]

If you are using FMS, you should be able to target the iPAD browser.  Just not with the same level of interactivity, but that's expected.  You do ofer a full solution to the iPAD.  It would sound like you didn't get the gig because the customer didn't care about all your perks.

Maybe they are just simply sold on something specific.

It sounds more like an excuse and not a reason.

Anyways, if you read the updated post: http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html

You might be able to target the iOS browser in the not so distant future with your existing code base.

[rexdtripod]

artguate wrote:

If you are using FMS, you should be able to target the iPAD browser.  Just not with the same level of interactivity, but that's expected.  You do ofer a full solution to the iPAD.  It would sound like you didn't get the gig because the customer didn't care about all your perks.

Maybe they are just simply sold on something specific.

It sounds more like an excuse and not a reason.

Nope.  Customer bought 400 IPads for their sales associates around the world.  They love our perks.  They've been using our desktop app for about 18 months.   During rehearsal for this particular gig we overheard someone on camera say something about the new IPads.  They never mentioned it.  Just expected it would work the same as it would anywhere else.  Why not?  They were stunned.  They're computing devices right?  We who write apps think the outside world understands all of the limitations.  They don't.  They just think it all should work.

We scrambled to put together a dumbed down version of the app - just video.  Had to.  Had production staff onsite - cameras, lighting, sound, etc.  Was like a friggin Apollo 13 mission in here as we scrambled.  In the end, no slides, polls, chat, screen movements, animated interactivity, etc.  Just video of their event.  It worked.  We got the feed to their IPad using HTTP streaming and an HTML5 video tag in a browser.  They hated it.  Cancelled.  They wanted our desktop app in their IPads.  They want to portray to their sales force and customers that they are high tech.  A video window in a browser didn't get it.

That said, they've given us three weeks to try again.  I have an IPad version of our desktop app almost ready via the mobile packager which is really cool.  Won't be ready and approved in three weeks.  They've also indicated that they don't want 400 reps installing an app to watch.  They want just a URL.

Had they given their reps Galaxies or Xooms I'd have been golden (at least for awhile).  App looks awesome on them and runs in browser.  Just the luck of the draw.

The reason I lay this out is to chronicle a real world example of how important Flex technology became and how messed up it is that it's being forced out of even some places.  There are people out here providing real world apps to business who need it's OO power.  My client really wants the "perks".  They are thrilled to death with them.  They think they portray them as cutting edge.

Targeting the IPad with via FMS with less interactivity may be able to be done, but "less interactivity" is a regression.  My customer yesterday certainly thinks so. 

I hope you are right and Adobe and others will find ways to fill the void.

[ColdFury]

Dare I say the word, ActionScript! It's an intuitive ECMA script based language with which anyone can get familiar with. In my opinion, Objective C is not. Adobe creates the best tools for designers and developers. Dreamweaver is KING, and FlashBuilder will continue to be the IDE of choice when creating Mobile applications. This is what I understood from the recent "changes" announcement. Obviously it will have to be re-branded again, but it's here to stay. Native extentions rock!

[rdgrimes]

Of course Flex is dying. Anyone who says otherwise is just engaged in wishful thinking.

Look at it this way. Flash Pro is being kept in-house, while Flex is being sent to live with the neighbors. But, "really, we're just as dedicated to Flex as ever." Yeah, right. This fact alone should tell you everything you need to know.

Most of us work for companies, and we know that companies are primarily interested in the bottom line. We also know that Adobe just laid off a boat load of developers and other employees. So, let's say you have a limited number of developers, are you going to spend your resources on:

a) projects that promote your profitable product lines?, OR

b) projects that support an open source community?

Next, consider that the open source Flex community relies on a proprietary runtime. You can only develop new SDK functionally that either:

a) is supported by the existing Flashplayer, or

b) that requires new Flashplayer features and Adobe is willling to expend resources (e.g., developers working on profitable projects).

Bottom line is this. Open source projects that depend on a proprietary product are doomed to fail - especially when the company owning the proprietary product gets nothing out of diverting resource from profitable product development to open source charitable contributions.

Once Adobe has let a couple years go by, and they are well past the current blow back from their Reed Hastings-like decision, their support of open source Flex will be less and less. There is simply no bottom line reason to continue to support Flex. Let's face it. By supporting Flex via their Flashplayer, they increase the likelihood of it being more buggy than necessary. Flex is an albatrose around the neck of Adobe and their Flashplayer.

[Karl_Sigiscar_1971]

There is truth in what you say, but you forget to mention that the Flash Player (on desktop) and AIR (on desktop, mobile and tablets)  runtimes will keep being developped because Adobe has revenues from them regardless of Flex. Adobe sells expensive licenses of the Flash Media Server family (as well as Flash Professional which is not discontinued as you point out) and they need to keep the runtimes to carry on with their development. Killing the runtimes would kill that revenue stream. So, Flash Player and AIR will keep being developped. That they are proprietary is immaterial. Flex is just a framework on top of that technology. If the community is willing to further develop Flex, it's not doomed to failure. As a matter of fact, Adobe might even put back some resources into Flex in a few years if HTML 5 dramatically fails (as AJAX did a few years ago, it went boom then bust).

I started studying HTML 5, just for kicks, and we are back to square one with the browser capabilities detection shenanigans.

[Fletchgqc]

Karl:

1. Do you have a breakdown - maybe a link or something - of how Adobe currently makes money through developing Flash, Flex and associated tools? That would be really interesting, because as you point out looking at current and predicted revenue streams is the best way to anticipate their upcoming tactics.
2. What do you mean that AJAX failed? Ajax is one of the lynchpins of dynamic content and HTML5 (except most use JSON not XML).

[Karl_Sigiscar_1971]

1. As I said, they make money out of the Flash Media Server licenses and Flash Professional licenses. Flex did not turn out to be profitable, requiring a lot of staff and not making enough money. In Flex 1 and 1.5, Flex Data Services was necessary to build the SWF. Since Flex 2, you can build the SWF with Flex Builder (aka Flash Builder). Adobe should never have done this and should never have released BlazeDS and open sourced AMF (allowing competing Flex server solutions to exist). A better strategy would have been to lower the price of Flex Data Services (aka LiveCycle Data Services) to be affordable. That would also have allowed more advanced RIAs, leveraging the Data Manage Services with the RTMP protocol. That's my view.

2. AJAX was all the hype long before HTML 5. Everybody in the enterprise was talking about it and using it. Then the projects hit the wall with many problems (performance, security...),  the hype deflated and Flex use soared to replace it. Now AJAX is back in the enterprise of course, with HTML 5, for how long this time ?

[UbuntuPenguin]

A better strategy would have been to lower the price of Flex Data Services (aka LiveCycle Data Services) to be affordable.

I was wondering about what would happen with LCDS since they were kind of sidelining Flex.  I know for a fact it has a range of uses outside of Flex from the documentation. However, it just felt like there was a "wall" you could hit with parent-child relations and database synchronicity(?) in complex applications.  While there are OSS solutions designed to solve this parent-child problem , they can still be kind of akward to use and intrusive on the code base.  I would gladly pay for many of the functionality facets here (http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/compare.html) but at 30K a processor, that puts it well out of the range of any non-corporate developer.

[Karl_Sigiscar_1971]

that puts it well out of the range of any non-corporate developer.

Actually, most investment banks use BlazeDS as opposed to LCDS. Each IT Team has a limited budget to run on.

[artguate]

It is simple.  The day that something finally shows up that can do what Flex can do... then Flex may have it's day's numbered.  But until that day happens, Flex will still be king.

See, even if Flex would suffer absolutely no further development, I still haven't found a single substitute.  Nothing comes even close.  So yeah, it currently depends on propietary pluggin, but that does not have to be the case.  It can be compiled to native code, and there is work being donated that shows that it also can be "translated" to js.

Also the Open Screen Project http://www.openscreenproject.org/ might be key to keep it alive.

Say what you say, it simply has no substitute.  Fact is that developing enterprise apps in javascript just plain sucks.  Like you said, the monetary bottom line is what is key.  Right now, I can deliver great enterprise apps at reasonable low costs that can run basically anywhere with one codebase.  Can you do that with anything else?  

So even if Adobe would complete abandon it, it still your current best tool.  So jump ship all you want... it's your choice... hope you find a good lifeboat, cause this ship is not sinking any time soon.

[rdgrimes]

@artguate:

"Say what you say, it simply has no substitute."

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I 'think' I may have found one with great community support and used by huge companies, such as IBM, Oracle, Sun, Toyota, etc. It's called ZKoss. Take a look at their demo page. Their component set is even more extensive than what Flex offers.

So, why am I looking at ZK? In analyzing our technology stack over the past decade+, we have gone through an evolving architecture (from DHTML using server side XSLT, to Flash 2004, to Flex). During the early days, we generated our J2EE web services with a product, Novell Composer. We thought we could trust Novell, but no! They end-of-lifed their product. So, we looked to go open source, as well as get out of the cross-browser hell of coding in JS. So, we moved to Spring/CXF web services and sought a solution that uses a VM plugin where we could truly write-once and run anywhere. Flash, and then Flex, seemed to fit that bill. Worked wonderfully well why the ride lasted. But, that's coming to an end (if not now, then in a few years when Adobe loses interest in supporting Flex in a Flashplayer that is clearly going to be focused on media and animation). In looking back, what has been the one constant that we could rely upon to not screw us over by abandoning us? The answer is Java. So, why not go with a Java based solution for the client? But, I didn't want a Java based solution that would require the client to have Java. This can be solved by server side transformation - something like JSP, but much better and with a rich component set. ZK is a satisfactory substitute for Flex, and it's easy to learn - especially if you already know Java.

[artguate]

@rdgrimes

"ZK is a satisfactory substitute for Flex". The keyword there is satisfactory.

ZK doesn't generate downloadable apps, no offline operation, etc...  While ZK is cool, it is not a satisfactory subtitute for me.  It also forces you to use Java on backend, that's not the case with Flex. 

And on a funny side note, the ZK site uses Flash.

[Guest]

artguate> well, adobe site is not using Flex.

All in all,

1 - no Flash support for mobile browsers.

2 - no Flash support on Apple products even RIA

3 - Adobe not developing Flex anymore

4 - No substitute for Flex

1 - not a big deal, develop apps for your websites

2 - bad, very bad. Cause I'm thinking that iPad will be everywhere next year. Although it's not new, it should not be underestimated. As stated above, money is the whole thing. It's not just "I made a cool app", if nobody is using it, what's the point.

3 - ok. But it's still at their mercy (Flash Player)

Well, if we look at the history, Flash was the only multiplatform for decades. Javascript too, but with the platform war, you ended up developing Javascript for alwost every of them. That was the reason that I switched to Flex in the first place.

But now, a new multiplatform is being defined, HTML5, CSS3. Ok, but until when? Isn't it a rerun of Javascript story? My answer is YES. That is, sooner, developers (time is money) will find themselves developing the same app for each of every platform again, and will head back to Flash application. And Flash Player will survive.

How about Flex?

How many of you really care about where and how Javascript is being maintained? Seems like every browser maker adopts it own interpretation of your code. It's weird right? But look at the fact: JQuery, Mootools, YUI... there are tons of them that really shaped the web. So Flash Player being proprietary is not drastically bad. Myself, I wish it wasn't either. But let us face it, they cannot let Flash Pro, and these other AS3 frameworks, go for the sake of Flex SDK.

4 - Don't count on that. We're people, we'll find a way around.

So to answer the question, is it dying, it's no. It's just slowing down due to the fast move of the technology. But it will rise up again as soon as HTML5 proves its inability.

[Fletchgqc]

@rdgrimes Yes ZK is very interesting. We went with Flex on a project 1-2 years ago and we seriously considered ZK at the time, however we weren't sure about its longetivity, active development and the documentation was written in what seemed to be "Chinese [i.e. bad] English" which we all know is painful to read and gave us real hesitation.

Now things seem to be advancing along for them and their website now definitely promotes how broadly their software is being used in the enterprise. It's certainly an interesting alternative to Flex.

[rdgrimes]

@Karl_Sigiscar_1971:

" That they are proprietary is immaterial."

Not at all. It is quite material that the open source community's roadmap for Flex is subject to cooperation by Adobe to add support to their Flashplayer for any new functionality required to satisfy Flex's evolution. Were it not proprietary, and were instead open source, that would not be an issue. So, it is precisely material. 

Shantanu Narayen has clearly stated his vision for Adobe (see http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/adobe%E2%80%99s-transformation.html 😞

"On Tuesday, we made some big announcements about our business moving forward:  Our strategy to double-down on the two growth markets of Digital Media and Digital Marketing"

Hmmmm... I didn't see enterprise application support listed anywhere in there.

If digital media and marketing is their (Adobe) strategic aim, but enterprise application support is the goal of the Apache community, do you not see there being a conflict at being able to get Adobe to cooperate in the long term? Their simply is no reason for a company focused on content to screw up their Flashplayer with support for applications - especially if by removing that support they can streamline even further the FP for rendering media.

I have no doubt that Adobe will support Flex for 2, 3, maybe 4-5 years. But, at some point, it WILL be dropped as "not in the strategic interest of Adobe."

[Karl_Sigiscar_1971]

Not at all. It is quite material that the open source community's roadmap for Flex is subject to cooperation by Adobe to add support to their Flashplayer for any new functionality required to satisfy Flex's evolution. Were it not proprietary, and were instead open source, that would not be an issue. So, it is precisely material. 

What I mean to say is that the Flash Player and AIR specs will continue to evolve. The specs will be driven by what's needed by both Flash Professional and Flash Media Server.

The Flex community will be able to build upon those new specs.

[Karl_Sigiscar_1971]

There are many AJAX frameworks out there, like jQuery. The AJAX frameworks are built on top of the browsers' capabilities, just as the Flex framework is built to top of the Flash Player / AIR runtimes.

Flex will die only if the community drops Flex, does not volunteer, does not further develop it.

[olegkon]

Here is a good answer from enterprise Flex guru:

http://yakovfain.com/2011/11/09/the-rumors-of-flash-players-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/

I hope that Apple will reconsider it's Flash hatred soon.

IMHO, Adobe gave up too soon and haven't handled PR correctly.

[nikos101]

its alive and kicking, don't worry folks

[Observer13]

A great summary of the future of flex, silverlight and html 5....

http://www.georelated.com/2011/11/web-mapping-enabling-technology-are.html

Is flex dead? It all depends on Adobe. HTML5 is certainly going well and adoption  is much faster than silverlight but no where near Flash players adoption levels. However, watch out for Windows 8 it could also be pushing out flash.... gonna take a while whatever happens.