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Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 03, 2007 06:58 AM
from the joining-the-party dept.
from the joining-the-party dept.
mikepotter writes "Adobe announced Flex Builder Linux Alpha at the Adobe MAX conference today. This is a native Linux port of the Flex Builder IDE (based on Eclipse) for building rich Internet applications. 'Flex Builder Linux is a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux. We wanted to get an early release out with the base Flex Builder features so you could begin to provide us with your feedback and let us know your priorities for additional features.'"
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Adobe Releases Flex Builder Linux Alpha
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I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I'll help anyhow:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/ [adobe.com]
"Adobe® Flex 3 is a cross platform, open source framework for creating rich Internet applications that run identically in all major browsers and operating systems."
Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I read "TFA" and I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 29 2005, @02:22PM)
free? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.footballfans.tv/)
GNU/Linux (Score:1, Funny)
(http://zork.net/~dsaklad)
See also
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html [gnu.org]
Will Cost Big $$$ Likely (Score:1)
(http://freejavalectures.googlepages.com/)
Eclipse ain't all the Adobe FLOSS lovin'... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.theirc.org/)
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/drupal.html [adobe.com]
linux support (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.solussd.com/)
FlexBuilder is okay but... (Score:2)
Flex versus Open Laszlo (Score:5, Informative)
(http://chronx.com/)
It's got a few interesting widgets[1], and it's starting to be adopted in more places such as Yahoo's Maps application.
Also worth looking into is OpenLaszlo (http://www.openlaszlo.org/) which is written in a standardized XML language, and compiles to both SWF or DHTML. I've found that there aren't as many people in the community, and documentation is a bit lacking, but being able to compile to multiple runtimes is nice, as is the understanding that if Adobe changes their mind, you can always compile to Silverlight or some other destination down the road.
Both can call Java backends fairly easily, and both are OSS, although OpenLaszlo is far more open.
Also worth investigating is Haxe (Haxe.org), which generates Flash files, and uses it's own custom programming language for both the client and the server.
[1]
http://www.brightworks.com/technology/adobe_flex/components_widgets_etc.html [brightworks.com]
Ha! Check Out the Balls on this Guy... (Score:1)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=657&threadid=1303887&enterthread=y [adobe.com]
Posted by "jaydeex"
Binary installer for eclipse!? (Score:3)
(http://elmuerte.com/)
Re:Binary installer for eclipse!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not open source, though. (Score:5, Informative)
SDK EULA Terms (Score:2)
IANAL, but the end user license agreements for the Adobe AIR SDK and Flex 3 SDK contain clauses that are rather frightening, which puts a serious crimp on how useful an IDE for those SDKs are.
From the Adobe AIR SDK EULA:
and from the Flex 3 SDK EULA:
These are very similar, differing mostly in the second set of restrictions.
While the whole clause is disconcerting (e.g., how the #$#@@#@$ can I warrant that my application and its AIR/Flex dependency doesn't interfere with the operability of arbitrary third-party programs?), what really scares me is the second set of restrictions:
Suppose a small village in Upper Mongolia enacts a statute that says push-buttons in GUIs are illegal. Why they would do that, I have no idea. But, once they do, if I have a AIR/Flex program that uses a push-button (say, an [OK] button), I'm in violation of the Adobe EULA, even if my program isn't used in that village. The Adobe EULA clause has no restrictions on relevant jurisdictions, or even timeframe (maybe you can't use the program on Sundays due to long-since-abandoned "blue laws", because the EULA doesn't constrain matters to only being laws, etc. currently in force).
Again, IANAL, and it may be that IAPBROTSI (I Am Paranoid Beyond Rationality On This Specific Issue). It's eminently possible that I could take these EULAs to a qualified attorney and be told that either I'm misunderstanding them or, while my interpretation is conceivable, they are unenforceable due to such-and-so restrictions on what you can have in a EULA. Let alone the whole question of the enforceability of EULAs and whatnot.
But I can't risk going to trial to defend my use of Adobe AIR or Flex, if I happen to do something that pisses Adobe off. Given sufficiently high-priced attorneys, Adobe could quite possibly convince a judge or jury that my paranoid interpretation is correct, and I'm stuck hoping that sanity would prevail on appeal or something.
Flex and AIR are really slick, but they ain't worth the headache to figure out my odds of prevailing should Adobe sue.
My 'rich' internet experience... (Score:1, Troll)
(Last Journal: Tuesday February 22 2005, @01:17PM)
To which I usually back up to TEXT ONLY, er Non-Rich Google and choose another site. Now thats 'rich'.
I HAVE 2 versions of Flash installed already.
Besides the worst websites use flash, I mean even after I get flash, the site is still busy, ugly, and usually contains less info than a text cache at google anyway.
So now I guess we get another annoying download box.
So Adobe now works with "standard" web? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.plkr.org/)
So I can assume that this application generates 100% valid HTML and XHTML constructs, with their own proprietary Flash being an additional extension to that baseline, riiiiiight?
Flash is:
And this message goes to all of those "web developers" who use Flash in their websites.. please use HTML to deliver the Flash, not the reverse.
The best Flex alternative no one's heard of... (Score:4, Interesting)
- Open source (BSD license)
- Free as in beer.
- Free as in liberty.
- Great UI composer
- Built for web service integration
- Lots of nifty online tutorial videos
- Eats its own dogfood: It runs in the browser! (No Java, no activeX,
no flying pig aka Eclipse, just DHTML)
- And.. (drumroll, please) NO FLASH!
I've only been kicking it around for a few weeks, but its a fantastic tool. The learning curve is a bit steep, but now that I got my head around it, I'm not looking anywhere else.Boycott (Score:1, Troll)
(http://cafepress.com/phototravel?pid=5934485)
Boycott the tools creating files in proprietary formats, until Adobe either releases the source code for the player(s), or begins producing binary players for all platforms. Win/i386, MacOS/i386 and Linux/i386 is not enough...
It is one thing for them to want to make money off the authoring tools. But keeping the player closed serves no good purpose to anyone (not even Adobe) and inconveniences many thousands.
open source, to a point (Score:3, Insightful)
As I understand it they have claimed they will open source parts of the flex sdk, but the flex ide, and the flash runtime plugins will still remain under the same old proprietary license, this is not acceptable. It would be a step backwards if in a few years a significant portion of content on the internet was trapped in proprietary binaries that are difficult to index and likely impossible for many to use a few years down the road. Adobe releases some specs for flash but they are released under terms saying that if you read the specs you are forbidden from writing anything capable of working with flash files. This is almost worse than nothing because even if you create a flash plugin completely independently or with the use of clean room techniques Adobe has the option of claiming that you must have looked at their specs and take you to court in an attempt to kill your project. Also there are many restrictions on the use of the plugin itself, for example you can't use it in many commercial applications such as a flash driven kiosk without first paying Adobe again.
How many years did Linux languish with outdated and extremely buggy versions of the flash plugins? We may have a more or less up to date version of the plugin now but there is no guarantee it will stay that way, a great deal of internet content is trapped in a format that we can only view as long as Adobe feels like letting us, and the architecture support is still pathetic, how is it there is still no native x86-64 support? This should have been done two years ago, to make no mention of the lack of flash9 support on the smaller architectures such as powerpc which effectively locks ps3 users out of browsing most modern flash based websites.
Adobe seems like a big heavy software company that still operates primarily in a 1980's mentality, trying to make the transition to something more modern and web-centric , and they are trying to get some of the glow of open standards and open source to rub off on them, the problem is that they seem to be faking much of it. They talk about openness to get you interested, then you dig into it and find out that there are always critical components they are still keeping under lock and key. I am no fan of flash but it does have its uses, I keep hoping that pressure from Microsoft's silverlight will cause Adobe to really open up the flash spec and allow 3rd parties to create their own implementations of the flash ide and flash runtimes, as pressure from Microsoft's half-assed pdf alternative caused Adobe to release pdf as an iso standard. Though I see no sign of this happening as Adobe still seems to believe they can have their cake and eat it too.
IDE price doesn't matter (Score:1)
This is bullsh*t... (Score:2)
(http://youtube.com/thedarkener)
I'm not going to give Adobe any slack until they release Shockwave for Linux. It's hurting many people, including the education sector, which is continuously switching to OSS platforms.
Re:Great - BUT: Flash Player *still* not open-sour (Score:1)
(http://www.x2ii.info/)
Re:Half-Hearted Decision (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Tuesday October 30, @10:59AM)
That pretty much already exists for YouTube, unless someone's found a way to make it go into iPhone mode on a PC browser. But that only worked because Apple basically strongarmed them into providing mp4 files, instead of Flash.