Flash

By Author: Gary Klingsheim
Total Articles: 4762
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Although their work ends up being merged and managed for the benefit of Internet users, the "techies" and the "designers" do different parts of the project. A few folks are good at both design and writing code, but typically there are different people doing these different tasks. In many ways, too, they live in completely different worlds. Some companies are trying to bridge those worlds, just a bit at first, and the unrivaled leader early on is Adobe Corporation with its Flex and Flash products.

A lot of Internet forums are being deluged with the question of 'what's the difference between Flex and Flash?' Some people outside of the Flex world think it's "just another programming language," which is not so. Granted, Flex does use MXML, but everything renders as ActionScript, so it is more accurate to say that Flex is a suite of tools and the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) in which you would build bigger, better, more complex and more reliable Flash applications.

"Anything you can do..."

Most anything you can do in Flash, you can also do in Flex, but it may be harder. You can also do most anything ...
... in Flex without Flash components, but things like detailed animation will be far more difficult. Because they share tools, resources and a scripting language, they can seem to the uninitiated like two flavors of the same program. They are not. The functional definition may be clearest: With Flex, using motion graphics and audio created in Flash, you can build sophisticated applications that can be run (viewed) in any browser that has the current Flash Player installed.

Flex could be called Flash's "big brother," as it leverages much of the same technology but helps software engineers, rather than animators, develop much more complex applications. Flash was created to give animators and illustrators the tools to create visually stunning Web "experiences," and Flex is Adobe's way of continuing the maturation of that tool set and giving it a bigger sandbox to play in. It can create SWF files that run on the Flash Player in any browser, but that's just scratching the surface of its power.

The construction crew analogy

This isn't the most technical article in the world for techies, but if you're a designer you may need an analogy to help you understand. If you hire the Flash Crew to build your house, a few general laborers show up with hand tools. They can do the job, but it might take a little time and you're not likely to get anything too fancy. The Flex Crew will show up with the same number of workers, but not only do they have power tools, they have a couple of cranes and a bulldozer. The house has the same plans, but it will be built faster, be more sophisticated, have other features that would have been impossible for guys with hand tools and be 100% up to code.

Flash, then, is capable of involved animations and applications, but is a tool that designers wield as they (or other designers) are building a Web site. Flex can use Flash components designed by artists within a new application that is being developed by programmers, one that includes the "business logic" to access databases for e-commerce, for instance. As stated before, Flex is not some new "language." It uses MXML, which is converted to ActionScript, and that's where most of the hard work gets done. Flex uses ActionScript the same way as Flash, but comes with a dramatically expanded feature set capable of creating far more intelligent, and elegant, applications.

The pros and cons of Flash

On the up side, Flash has excellent animation control and great sound control, as well. It is very familiar to designers and operates in a well-adapted Adobe application environment with the look-and-feel paradigm of the entire Creative Suite. It is a designer's tool.

On the down side, not many designers are very good at programming, although some have learned how to "make it work." They would rather be designing or animating something, so importing fields from a database or XML is not in their skill set. They often do it poorly, or simply tell clients "you can't do that."

Flex pros and cons

One the up side, Flex has fabulous "business" logic, and it can connect to anything-any kind of data in mainframes, XML files, databases, legacy systems, etc.-and get information from anywhere. It is a tried, true and traditional way of building software applications as opposed to discrete animations. It is a software engineer's tool.

On the down side, developers are generally not good designers. They won't conceive and execute a type effect or an animated logo splash screen any better with the excellent Flex tools than they would with any other tools. It's not what they do.

Putting the pros together

With Flex, a software engineering kind of guy can use the great artwork that the designer has created, and then easily implement the business logic to complete the application development. In this way, we get the best of both worlds, designers doing great design, programmers doing great code. With the separation of tasks between the programs, the artists, animators and designers work in Flash, the programmers, developers and software engineers work in Flex, and together they build much richer, more complex applications.

Bottom line, the Flex IDE works naturally (natively) with content produced by the Flash IDE. This gives applications that have been built with Flash the power of the Flex framework and the reach of its development tools. It is by using Flash and Flex together that a development team can build sophisticated logic applications and visually stunning Web experiences with the highest quality design and animation content.
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