Flex 2: How the Net Was Won
Boy, what a night: Adobe announced three pieces of news that should make every web developer sit up and take notice.
Firstly, the Flex 2 framework and compiler are going to be available for free. Secondly, there is going to be a free version of Flex Enterprise Services (FES) that is not clusterable and limited by a certain number of concurrent connections (but apparently this is not a "developer version" -- you will be able to deploy applications with it.) Finally, the Flex Builder 2 tool will be priced under $1,000.
What do these three announcements add up to? One thing: Adobe gets it.
This is a battle cry and I am so glad to see that Adobe are stepping up to the plate.
Making the framework and compiler available for free suddenly makes Flex a very sexy alternative to Ajax for web application developers. Flex is light years ahead of Ajax in terms of the types of interactivity that it makes possible and, most importantly, how easy it makes it to create such rich experiences. The free version of FES is going to allow these same developers to create data-rich RIAs with a workflow that is unsurpassed -- even in the current darling framework, Ruby on Rails. And, finally, having an affordable IDE like Flex Builder 2 is going to allow developers working in any size business to take advantage of rapid prototyping and visual development features.
Basically, Adobe appears to have addressed every one of the concerns I raised in my previous post. I can't be happier. It's about time Flex took over the Net and, with this aggresive new strategy, I can't see any reason why it shouldn't.
Here's to Flex 2! I can guarantee that you're going to be seeing a lot more it. And, if you haven't looked into Flex yet, I would wholeheartedly recommend that you do so if you don't want to miss the train on the next big thing in the world of RIAs. In fact, you can start right now by downloading the new Flex 2 beta release from Adobe Labs.
Comments
I haven't seen anything that indicates what the limits are on this free version. Is it really going to be usable on a small to medium size site? If there is a sudden ramp up to $15000, that will kill it for me, it's too hard to get clients to buy off on those kind of costs.
by jnicholas on 2006-02-01 15:58:19
The only pricing that Adobe has announced regarding FES is the free one. From what I understand, you should be able to deploy applications with this license. Apparently there are also going to be per CPU, per project and per-enterprise licenses but there are no details on this yet and Mark Anders stated on his blog that they will be announced closer to the actual ship date.
I am sure that Adobe know that a sudden ramp up to $15,000 will kill if for lots of people. I don't think they'd do that. They appear to be trying to do the right thing in order to get Flex into developers' hands and to get it used on a wide scale.
by Aral Balkan on 2006-02-01 16:03:22
by Georgia on 2006-08-08 20:50:25
by Valium liquid form. on 2007-05-01 05:51:40