Top 10 Reasons : Why Flex wins over Silverlight :)
1. Flex is available today and works.
2. Flex 2 is viewable in 85+% of web browsers, Flex 2 SWF files run in Flash Player 9.
3. You can use any HTTP Server and any backend technology (.NET,JAVA,PHP,Ruby,CF, Python) with Flex via XML, SOAP, Sockets, ZLIB, Etc.
4. Flex 2 has a mature and growing component set. There are lots of developers creating open source components for Flex and the source code for all components is available today in the Flex SDK. See: Flexbox, FlexLib, FlexComponents for details.
5. Flex does not integrate well with .NET on the backend. We are working on a great solution to make .NET integration seamless. Additionally strongly typed SOAP Web Services support coming in Flex 3 (very soon) including full support for .NET SOAP encodings.
6. Real-time data push with Binary Sockets using any TCP/IP Socket server. FTP/NNTP/SVN/POP/XMPP Example: http://webmessenger.yahoo.com
7. Graphical and Programatic skinning with Illustrator/Flash/Photoshop/CSS
8. There are many large companies actively developing RIA’s with Flex, from JPMorgan/Chase to Yahoo to Google to many Web 2.0 start-ups.
9. If you develop using Flex or AJAX you can port your app to the desktop using Apollo. Apollo allows you to build desktop applications for WIN/LIN/OSX deployed as a single .AIR file cross-platform. One toolset for Web RIA and Desktop RIA development.
10. Flex has gone fully open source Mozilla Public License. All compilers and framework will be available for extension and embedding within the Flex 3 SDK.
June 26th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Flex is a good platform but this list requires a few comments.
Maturity and penetration are probably the biggest advantages of Flex. It is inevitable, thought, that this advantage will vanish over time so the points 1, 2, part of 4 and 8 will become irrelevant (but they certainly apply right now).
Point 3 (any server-side technology) is not an advantage of Flex. The same applies to Silverlight.
Point 4 (components) has more to do with maturity of frameworks. I don’t see any technical advantages to Flex’s extensibility mechanism over other technologies (to be honest, I think there are some great reserves in the Flex extensibility today).
Point 5 (.NET services support, or current lack of it) is presented as an advantage?
Point 6 (sockets) – sockets are definitely considered for final release (according to Silverlight forums).
Point 9 (Flex AIR) is really an important advantage. I like this feature very much.
Also the Open Source thing is nice even though for me as the developer, there’s not a big difference between true open source and “source available”. Because of the reflection support in .NET, I can always examine internal workings of any .NET component – and this is what really matters for me.
Quite honestly, as the Flex platform is several years older than Silverlight, I would expect this list to be a bit more exciting. Because Silverlight can offer some very exciting features compared to Flex.
Regards,
Borek
June 26th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
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March 9th, 2008 at 11:47 am
“… for me as the developer, there’s not a big difference between true open source and “source available””
Ah well. There is a strategic difference, yes. For me as a developer or TI manager, this means that I could fix bugs or improve things myself. I could take the framework to different directions if that makes sense to my company. But the most important thing perhaps is that I wouldn’t be tied to an unique vendor. I’d not be locked in.