[CoLoCo] Is creating something in flash == programming?

[Kevin Fries]

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 11:41 -0600, Neal McBurnett wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 04:00:22PM -0600, Kevin Fries wrote:
> > Flash animation with ActionScript is commonly called Flex.  Flex with
> > offline capabilities is called AIR (which just released for Linux in
> > alpha form last week.... YEAH!!!!).
> 
> Thanks, Kevin - this is much clearer than all the hype would have us
> believe.  Sounds kind of like the dhtml hype, obscuring the underlying
> tecnologies.
> 
> Any insights on flash _creation_ tools for Linux?  What was this Air
> thing released for "Linux"?

Air is a very complex technology that uses flash as a gui/widget front
end to enterprise class applications.  There is a server side, but many
like to use Perl, PHP, Python (especially django), or Ruby (yep, you
guessed it, with rails).

In short, it is an extremely professional looking widget class that is
laid out using XML files.  You have a full event/trigger programming
structure.  Many are looking to this to replace Java front ends in a
client/server model.  The idea is if I can submit to something back end
that can handle a much more enterprise CRUD like interface, You are set.
So, for example, Django and RoR are OK at producing web based forms, but
Flash blows it away.  Get the Flash to produce the front end dialogs,
then submit your data to a more formal back end.

Adobe also has a back end server, but it does not integrate well with
anything else.  So, I sort of discount it pretty quickly for anything
other than a one up program.

The best part is that AIR has caching technology.  It should in theory
(meaning it says it can, but I have never tested it) be able to take
input offline, and then sync to your back end services when an Internet
connection becomes available.

-- 
Kevin Fries
Senior Linux Engineer
Computer and Communications Technology, Inc
A Division of Japan Communications Inc.