There is a very interesting program out there that may be of interest to many of you. It is called Adobe Flex.
The short answer to “What is Flex?” would have to be, “Flex is Flash for Programmers.”
Flex is a Eclipse based IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It allows you to create Flash based applications for either Web or Desktop use and utilizes ActionScript and MXML (an XML based language).
Flash is usually considered a design program for the artistically minded. Many program minded people found time lines difficult to deal with for programming purposes. So with that in mind Adobe developed Flex. Rather than being time line based it uses the free Eclipse IDE as a basis to create Rich Internet Applications (RIA).
Flex is a professional tool, so runs around US$249.-. It can build all sort of nifty interface based applications for those who wish very user interactive tools. I can talk all I wish, but to truly understand what I am talking about, just swing by the “Flex Showcase” to see some Live Applications built with Flex.
There is an excellent video tutorial series called “Flex 3 in a week.” You can either watch online or if you have/you can download Adobe Media Player and watch their videos offline. Just go to the favorites page and at the lower left corner paste in this RSS Feed (http://sessions.adobe.com/FlexInAWeek/feed.xml) and it will load all 47 videos and you can watch them at will. A Trial version of Flex is available.I suggest watching some of them as well just to get a good idea of what you can build with it before you decide to spend the money. They even have different Flex Learning Paths depending if you are a web designer/developer or a programmer etc.
That said, this is the Flex builder which is more of a Drag and Drop interface type thing. There is also a Flex SDK (Software Development Kit) That allows you to develop and deploy Flex applications using an IDE of your choice by including the Flex framework (component class library) and Flex compiler.
Nor are you limited to ActionScript and MXML, Flex supports ColdFusion, PHP, Java and .NET as well as SQL and Oracle.
The final program will be published as a Flash SWF. If you choose to create a Desktop Application, you will need Adobe AIR and users for the web will need Flash Player 9.
In my situation at work, I will be taking command line batch processes using Oracle and re-writing them into desktop Flex apps so the employees can do the work we programmers must do at this time. I strongly suggest you explore the “Flex in a week” videos, this may be a excellent tool for you or your business.
Of course I am not a Flash fan in the normal use of Flash, but this software has impressed me so far and I look forward to working in it, it is fairly easy and with a base knowledge of programming it can create some interesting applications. I have seen some references to accessibility, I have not yet been able to really see how accessible Flex apps can be made, I will have to see when I create my first application.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Flex apps can be made a bit more accessible if the built-in components are used. The premise is that if you use a toggleButtonBar, there can be some additional semantic information given to the user. There are ways to add additional accessibility information to custom-components as well.
There are still some challenges - right now the Flash Player uses Microsoft Active Accessibility, so it only can be made accessible on Windows. But it’s something…
January 5th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Yes, in fact I have played with it and have a demo of JAWS.
There used to be Fangs as well, it showed thetext version of what a Screen reader would read, not sure if it made the jump to Fx 3 or not.
These are a good way to get a feel for what your site sounds like and the problems that face vision impaired users. That said, we are still sighted so we do not use it the same way, so it is fine to use them as examples, but testing the sites yourself can give false security.
But by all means everyone would do well to play with something like JAWS demo or Firevox to get a feel for how your site acts.
Thank you for bring it up.