I have some experience of developing in Flex/Actionscript using Cairngorm framework. At that time I had no prior experience of ActionScript/Flex and it took me some good 3 months to get started with seriously developing an application. That time too, I was skeptical developing an app based in Flash, which won’t be viewable on all the PC browsers(not without updating flash), leave alone iphone/ipad. But I want to see what kind to application can be built using Flex, so took the challenge.
But now I am again starting to wonder why should I muddle into Flex, when I have jquery/ajax, various fast php frameworks(which I am comfortable with unlike ActionScript/Flex).
How, if I decide to, should I convince my clients that website in Flex can be much better than ones built in HTML/php etc.
Can somebody throw some light on this?
Regards
You should ask yourself why you need to use flex. Are you developing a game? A 3D graphics application on the web? Something that actually cannot be achieved with HTML?
If not, there is no reason of using flex instead of HTML. HTML is an open and standard specification, you don’t need plugins, your application will run on any platform with a browser supporting html, and it will be faster and less resource-consuming. Don’t fall in the error of developing in flash/flex something that can be done perfectly with HTML/AJAX. I saw some developers creating applications with flex or silverlight that consisted in just a series of forms, and it was a ridicolous waste of time and resources.
So the only way to convince your clients to use flex should be finding something you actually can’t do with HTML.. and having in account that HTML5 is almost here and hardware-accelerated HTML5 browsers will be launched at the end of this year.., it will be difficult to convince people to get tied to flash/flex! 🙂