Adobe to release Flex beta

Adobe is expected on Wednesday to release a beta edition of Flex 2.0 and make licensing changes to encourage broad adoption of the Flash development tool set.

Flex products, originally from Macromedia, are aimed at professional software developers who write Web applications that use the Flash presentation system.

The product line includes an integrated development environment based on the Eclipse software, as well as "frameworks," or prewritten code to speed application development. There is also a server component for corporate applications that tap into back-end systems.

The beta of Flex 2.0 is scheduled to be available for download on Wednesday from the Adobe Labs Web site, along with Adobe Flash Player 8.5. A final version of Flex 2.0 is due in the second quarter this year.

With the beta release, Adobe plans to unbundle the components of the Flex package and lower prices in an effort to encourage developers to use the software.

The company's goal is to increase the number of Flex developers from several thousand to a million, said Jeff Whatcott, senior director of product marketing at Adobe's enterprise and developer business unit.

Adobe is introducing a free, basic software developers kit that includes the Flex Framework, compiler and documentation. The Flex Builder development tool costs less than $1,000 per developer.

Flex Enterprise Services 2.0, which connects to back-end systems, will continue to cost about $15,000 per server, Whatcott said.

[shant sherbetdjian]

Flex not FLEXable

Great opportunity for macro,,err,adobe to penetrate the enterprise environment and the web-based app. programmer space as a whole, however, with that pricing expect competition from Laszlo and othe open-source efforts to quickly sideline it.
- shant sherbetdjian

[zstepek]

Very Flexible

While Laszlo and other open-source efforts, and even Microsoft's XAML could all be seen as competitors to Flex, none of them really have the combination of benefits that Flex offers. First, Flex uses the Flash Platform, and the Flash Player is on more than 95% of desktops. Second, Flex integrates well with other tools. Without spending the $15,000 on a seperate application server, a backend team can expose functions as Web Services or use ColdFusion CFCs with the CF Adapter to build their application. Third, Actionscript 3.0 performance in many cases surpasses the performance of JavaScript. Fourth, the Flex 2 Builder tool is very robust, and being built on the Eclipse platform, allows you to use all of the great plugins that are available for Eclipse in the same authoring environment. This combination has made Flex 2 my environment of choice for the Rich Internet Application space, and I believe will cause many others to make the same decision.

[zstepek]

More good news for RIA Developers

Adobe has just announced that they will release a free SDK for Flex that will include the base Framework and a command-line compiler, opening the Flex (and Flash) world to anyone!

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/controller.cfm?handler=PostHandler&#38;action=click&#38;postId=77820&#38;nextPage=http%3A%2F%2Fweblogs%2Emacromedia%2Ecom%2Fsho%2Farchives%2F2006%2F01%2Fflex%5Fbeta%5F1%5Fava%2Ecfm" target="_newWindow">http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/controller.cfm?handler=PostHandler&#38;action=click&#38;postId=77820&#38;nextPage=http%3A%2F%2Fweblogs%2Emacromedia%2Ecom%2Fsho%2Farchives%2F2006%2F01%2Fflex%5Fbeta%5F1%5Fava%2Ecfm</a>

[diamondtearz]

Please consider correcting the article about Flex 2

I was very excited to read the article about the Flex 2 beta and enjoyed the breaking news. Thanks for getting the news out there!

I feel that it is important to correct this information because as a widely read source and the first place to post information about the release you will inevitably play a pivotal role in the reception of the product by developers outside the community. As evidenced by the very first comment posted in response to the article, the cost of the different components of Flex play a major role in the adoption of the technology.

As a member of the Flex developer community I appreciate your awareness of the importance of your role in the propogation of correct information about this key part of the Flash platform and look forward to working with the new community memebrs that are sure to hear about Flex from your article.

[diamondtearz]

Please consider correcting the article about Flex 2

I was very excited to read the article about the Flex 2 beta and enjoyed the breaking news. Thanks for getting the news out there!
I am however concerned about some of the details of the article.
I feel that it is important to correct this information because as a widely read source and the first place to post information about the release you will inevitably play a pivotal role in the reception of the product by developers outside the community. As evidenced by the very first comment posted in response to the article, the cost of the different components of Flex play a major role in the adoption of the technology.

As a member of the Flex developer community I appreciate your awareness of the importance of your role in the propagation of correct information about this key part of the Flash platform and look forward to working with the new community members that are sure to hear about Flex from your article.

[aralbalkan]

There will be a free version of Flex Enterprise Services

The article does not mention that there apparently will be a free version of Flex Enterprise Services that is limited by the number of concurrent users allowed and which is not clusterable. From what I understand, this will not be a "developer edition" but rather a server that you can actually deploy with.

Stating that FES will cost $15,000 appears to be somewhat misleading and will no doubt put developers off of the platform. I would urge you to correct the article accordingly.