for 1 - check haxe and nme, its made for cross platform from the ground
up, so yes. but im not expert/
for 2- if we would not be doomed to re write it, i would be the first to
be happy. but when Alex is the first to call for a rewrite because a
rearchitecturing is too difficult to get enough modularity, and to give
the community the ability to make it evolve, then i think we have not
much alternatives.
200 000 hours of work, but in that theres some hours about porting from
AS2 to AS3, some hours to do MX components and spark, when a new re
write could start only with spark, and theres a lot of time of API
conception which we will use back. i even think that we can use back a
lot of high level classes and all the api documentation, which is long
to take care of, and that we can use as it is, because the goal is to
get the same API at the end (at least a big part of it).
Le 17/11/2012 16:19, Nils Dupont a écrit :
"I think that Haxe is such a "all use cases" solution when AS3 + Cordova is
not (unless someone proves the contrary)."
Of course not, it is what I said a few times in this discussion.
I don't know Haxe, another time, and I have nothing against the perspective
of using this technology.
But just 2 questions :
1) Can you access to native features like Camera, Accelerometer, File
system, etc. easily with Haxe, and is it cross-platform, I mean able to run
the same on different OS?
http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.2.0/guide_getting-started_index.md.html
2) Don't you think that the effort of rewriting totally the Flex framework
with Haxe is not too big for the community?
I don't remember who said that in this discussion but Flex represents
something like 200,000 hours of work...
Nils
2012/11/17 sébastien Paturel <sebpatu.f...@gmail.com>
Hi Carlos,
By the way thank you for the initiative :)
Yes i agree that theres a point about simple use cases against complex app
use cases.
But if we must consider different solution for every target, it will be
much more difficult to achieve and maintain, compared to a global solution
which can fit to all use cases.
I think that Haxe is such a "all use cases" solution when AS3 + Cordova is
not (unless someone proves the contrary).
But one thought here, maybe mad one
if we really start a re write from scratch, why not maintain two language
versions of the new framework?
one in AS3 with Alex solution (whatever it is) for cross platform which
has the big advantage to keep using the already existing AS3 code around
and make the transition more easy.
And in parallel tranlate it to haxe which would be a beter solution for
very new projects (still has to be discussed of course).
I think that:
- its doable, as AS3 and haxe are very similar, and if we port any new
piece of code created in AS3 to haxe anytime time its checked in, it should
not be so much work to achieve and to keep in synch.
- it gives the best of the two worlds.
I agree that its a bit a contradiction with what i complained just above :p
Le 17/11/2012 15:05, Carlos Rovira a écrit :
Hi Sebastien,
I have use cases where I would need something tiny to be deployed to the
browser. We have huge products based on Flex/JEE, and our interface can do
lots of things. But our product could be in mobile browsers integrated in
diferent webs. We cannot do this right now without targeting HTML/JS.
So I'd be happy to be able to develop that components and tiny
developments
for "browser-mobile" with the same client technology. So this will be make
to reuse libraríes and all kind of things (maven, IDE knowledge,
deployment
strategies....) I only need to select a diferent output...in this case
HTML/JS.
I'm with you that I would not plan to make any of our huge flex apps in
HTML5, we are not mad! ;)
2012/11/17 sébastien Paturel <sebpatu.f...@gmail.com>
i was in fact talking about enterprise app.
it is already quite rapidly heavy perf consuming.
if all says that HTML5 is not ready yet for RIA and enterprise apps that
flex can do very well, why the hell would we try to render flex on HTML5
engine for native apps.
I was talking about 3D rendering, in a starling sens, as a background
rendering engine, not as application.
Le 17/11/2012 14:25, Nils Dupont a écrit :
It really depends on which kind of application you want to deploy. I
was
more thinking of common "entreprise" oriented applications, e.g. a few
views, with a few lists and a few forms. For 3D rendering I agree that
it
is not the best way to go.
2012/11/17 sébastien Paturel <sebpatu.f...@gmail.com>
Does not cordova only launch a web browser wrapped in an native app?
If so, its very bad result in terms of performances right?
in a native app environement, we can leverage from 3D rendering (the
best
performances), but with cordova solution, we will use the lowest
performant
renderer available, the HTML5 renderer.
it does not sound very promising to me, but maybe i'm wrong.
Le 17/11/2012 14:14, Nils Dupont a écrit :
Has anyone tried to make a bridge between Apache Flex and Apache
Cordova?
I mean generating an Apache Cordova HTML5/JS application from a Flex
Mobile
MXML/AS3 application (at least for a subset of Flex Mobile components
e.g.
views & transitions, lists, input controls, native APIs access, web
service
access, etc.)
Apache Cordova has the advantage to be able to target 7 different
mobile
OS
and of course is open source.
For the UI controls, it is possible to use different librairies
(JQuery
UI,
Twitter Bootstrap, etc.)
Maybe it is also an other way to consider in order to be able to
deploy
Flex Mobile applications to mobile devices without
the use of Air runtime?
Nils
NB: Concerning desktop applications, Flash Player remains, in my
opinion,
the best way to deploy cross-browser applications.
2012/11/17 Maxime Cowez <maxime.co...@gmail.com>
Are developers on this list still able to earn a living building
new
Flex apps, or are you maintaining old ones?
I was actually hired 9 months ago by my current company to set up a
new
Flex development branch, as they wanted a share of the market in that
area.
As such I am mainly creating new "enterprise" apps for government
clients
so I can take full advantage of Spark and don't have to worry about
legacy
too much. From my experience in that short amount of time I can tell
you
this: we started by creating small(-ish), fairly risc-free projects,
which
we could deliver with very good quality and on time even though on a
tight
deadline. Because of Flex's RAD (rapid application development)
possibilities we were able to use prototypes to discuss functionality
early
in the development process. All of which lead to very satisfied
customers,
of which some were known to be "clients from hell". Bigger orders are
rolling in as we speak.
I'd like to highlight one specific approach we took in selling Flex:
a
customer wanted us specifically to use Dojo as a technology. We took
the
risk to develop a small prototype in Flex and presented it to them.
They
saw immediately that the UX was far superior to what they were used
to.
And
we told them we could *perhaps* deliver the same with Dojo, but it
would
cost them at least twice as much (which is a true estimate - not just
for
selling purposes - and we had just proven by delivering the prototype
in
no
time). They did not have to think very long about it...
We've been trying out various enterprise-level HMTL5/JS frameworks
and
the
truth is, none of them comes even close to what Flex can do in terms
of
stability, possibilities, performance and most importantly (for the
customer) development time. And yes I've included performance in that
list:
none of those enterprise-level frameworks have decent performance
compared
to Flex when presenting lots of data; I'm only speaking of classic
web-applications here.
@paul There's a team not far from my desk that's making a GIS
application
with GWT: the project is a total mess and we're loosing money on it.
To sum it up: from my experience Flex as it is now still can be sold
in
markets that are not too sensitive to buzzwords.
On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Paul Hastings <
paul.hasti...@gmail.com
wrote:
Are developers on this list still able to earn a living building new
Flex
apps, or are you maintaining old ones?
in our neck of the woods flex is still kind of king for old
school
GIS
applications (analytical/decision support/etc.) especially w/ESRI
backends.
mainly for desktops & some stripped down functionality for
tablets--much
of
the processing is shared between client & backends.
while i'm sure there are some big/complex JS/JTML5 apps for this
market
somewhere, haven't actually seen any.
