Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
Nicolas is developer and promotions team for haXe all in one. ;-) But haXe alone can't compete with Laszlo and Flex in some aspects. For example, just because these frameworks offer a XUL like attempt for fast developing GUIs. What I mean is, that both are using a declarative, xml-based programming language (MXML or LZX) sometimes mixed with some ECMA-Scripts. Of course Flex generates AS classes out of the MXML before compiling, but you don't have to bother about that all the time while you write nice apps. I have made a comparison of several workflows/frameworks (Laszlo VS. Flex (1.5 at that time) VS. Flash IDE VS. FAMES VS DHTML/XmlHttpRequest (AJAX)) in my diploma thesis, which is written in german. The biggest problem in comparing such workflow/frameworks is in setting up nice criteria in which one can compare them. I wrote the same calendar application using all of these workflows/frameworks. Interesting for me: I finished the application fastest with OpenLaszlo, which I had never used before. Don't get me wrong each workflow (also haXe) has its advantages and disadvantages. It depends on your problem/project definition. Matthias 2007/1/30, Nicolas Cannasse [EMAIL PROTECTED]: At this point, the only runtime Flex 2 targets is Flash Player 9/AS3. Laszlo targets FP7/AS2, plus Ajax/DHTML and soon Java ME. I believe Laszlo shows future development targeting FP9/AS3. BTW there's also haXe which targets FP6-7-8 and FP9 as well. http://haxe.org Nicolas ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
Warning William ... Brain Dump in Progress... First I want to mention that I try not to compare them too much on email lists because what invariably happens is that somebody somewhere reads the post, takes a line or two out of context and it becomes overemphasized. Or somebody compiles all the comparison posts into a horribly simplified and misleading table and posts it somewhere for managers to use instead of giving their developers the time to evaluate the options for themselves. I do think it's appropriate to compare them a little bit here as methods of flash coding and I do want to offer my summary of current thoughts for fellow flash developers who are thinking of trying them out. But anybody who reads this, please consider it light conversation. Like Matthias, I've spent a lot of time now with them both and think that it really comes down to your criteria more than anything else. I can see a lot of reasons why even the same company might use one instead of another on different projects and I'm certain to miss some of the important points of comparison. I'm interested in Haxe also, but focus on Flash, Flex and Laszlo because I'm a contractor in a small city, so a lot of work seems to pop up in mid project, when the language choice has been made long ago and they need an extra set of hands or help with a problem. I should mention that I have less experience with Flex than I do with Flash or Laszlo, and more with Flex 1 than 2, though I've spent 2 months now trying to catch up with Flex2. In general, I prefer them both over Flash for projects where you have more than one person, but for small programs I think it's quicker to do them in Flash and they both benefit from Flash as a prototype tool and benefit from swf vector assets guiding the design, even if you are going to use the drawing api to draw out the images. The things that I love about Laszlo and Flex are their maintainability and how they scale to larger applications and more people. These are the same. I love the declarative nature of the xml tags, but find xml itself to be a bit clunky and would be curious to see what declarative layout features in a language like Haxe might look like. It will also be interesting to see what Flash 9 does for components and layout. Language Features: States, Binding, Constraints, Animators These are all very similar since Flex2. In general, Laszlo's syntax is more terse and Flex's is more formal. Things happen automatically for you in Lzx that you have to explicitly type in with mxml. Personally I like the terser syntax of Laszlo, but realize that Flex's more formal style; which reminds me of taking my medicine, has some advantages. A good example for comparison here is the repeaters. With Flex you need to embed things in a repeater component. Laszlo's views automatically replicate when the view is bound to more than one data node. In general, the lzx way is nicer, but what do you do when you want to explicitly reference one of the replicated views after the fact to do some manipulation? You need to know what's happening behind the scenes and know that an array of clones has been created for you; that you can use the array to reference them. Something like that tripped up a friend of mine when he was learning lzx. It's nice to have things happen for you invisibly, but it raises the stakes that you know what is happening behind the scenes. Similarly a new coder given the equivalent code written in the two languages would have the name of the repeater to go from to look up what is happening, so there is some benefit to being explicit from the start - and this probably enables some speed optimization in Flex - it just ends up also being much more verbose, which gets old. E4x and Regular expressions are two really nice language features Flex has at this point that Lzx doesn't. But at some point in the future those will be incorporated into lzx as well. Flash Player Features:Drawing Api, Video, Sound, Printing, Fonts and Text Formatting This is a mixed bag, but is generally in Flex's favor over both Laszlo and Flash in that Flex and As3 fixed and improved some fundamentals that laszlo hasn't incorporated yet. A big one is text formatting. Like with Haxe, the actionscript api's are still available to you with Laszlo, but in most cases they've wrapped up functionality into their own classes. In many cases there is some benefit to this as it allowed them to fix things that were fundamentally wrong with the early versions of the flash player, but now that everything seems to work, it does potentially become tougher to track down problems because you have two layers instead of one to look at. On rare occasions you still need to actually use actionscript to access some of these features. Components The Out of the Box Lzx components are generally good, but not quite as good as the Flex ones. I don't think they look as nice, and a few of them are slower than their Flex counterparts, though I've yet to see a
Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
I'm not in a position to have an opinion (everyone would think I'm tainted ;-) , but I just made an interesting observation, when comparing the size of the mailing list for creating Laszlo, to that of the mailing list for using it: http://www.openlaszlo.org/pipermail/laszlo-dev/ http://www.openlaszlo.org/pipermail/laszlo-user/ The mailing list volume among people *using* the system has dropped to 44K in Jan07, compared to 149K in Jan06. Similar year-to-year declines are seen in prior months. But the mailing list volume for *creating* the system itself has increased, to 330K in Jan 07, from 139K in Jan 06, with slightly smaller increases in the preceding three months. When the two lists started, in late 2004, users outnumbered its developers by 2:1 or 3:1. During 2005 the two mailing lists grew to about equal conversational levels, but during 2006 the conversation about using the tool dropped to less than half that of writing the tool. During the past month, conversation about writing Laszlo was about eight times the level of people actually using it. I don't know of a similar chart of conversational levels for FlashCoders, but there's one for FlexCoders: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/ Here, there were 3200 full messages in Jan07, compared to 1300 in Jan06. The highwater mark was in June-Aug 06 (after the release of Flex 2) with about 3600 separate messages per month. For the past three months conversational volume has been about twice that of the year-ago levels. How people talk about something doesn't mean everything about a technology, but it's one indicator of how people regard things... take it for what it's worth. Pretty startling changes, though. jd -- John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA Weblog: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd Aggregator: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/ Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks. ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
Hi John, Yes, I watch the traffic too and find it interesting, but not really startling. I wouldn't read TOO much into it. Just so you know, at this time last year Flashcoders traffic was about the same as Flexcoders, but now it's about a quarter of Flexcoders traffic as well. I would trust, too, that you really wouldn't be all THAT tainted, maybe in this case poking a dog with a stick, but I think there is plenty of work to go around and that such pokes are probably still pretty good natured. There are a couple of reasons I'd suggest for what you've noticed. The first is that because it's open source, most serious user's really become developers at some point, which I think is a part of the juice of open source. I think I've made more posts in dev than in user, even though most of the time I'm really just a user. More significantly, It's just that after some time the use becomes not that interesting. You figured stuff out. I think the last time I put up a traditional content question on Flashcoders was in the last millenium, but I still develop flash applications and stay current with it and stay subscribed. There just aren't as many questions(problems) to motivate posting. Similar with Laszlo, there were a lot of questions when 3 was fresh and new. Now, the questions and problems have more or less been answered, the docs are more up to date and searches bring answers. I look forward to flash9 and hope that it reinvigorates flashcoders, but actionscript references are so much better now that that must be taking a toll on the flash user lists as well. Once was, if you relied on the docs you were doomed and needed the folk knowledge of the groups, but the as3 docs seem top notch and has an effect. ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
Cort, Thank you very much for your very thoughtful and informed post. This is a great time to be a Flash developer. It is great watching the Flash/SWF ecosystem expanding. I have my hands full with Flash and Flex. But I appreciate having an understanding of how others generate swfs. Your post was very informative for me in this way. And with Apollo likely launching sometime this year, wow, look out! Best regards, g ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
AW: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
@Matthias Dittgen Is it possible to read your german diploma thesis of this techniques? Greetings from Cologne Peter »» -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- »» Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] »» [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im »» Auftrag von Matthias Dittgen »» Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Januar 2007 09:53 »» An: Flashcoders mailing list »» Betreff: Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo »» »» Nicolas is developer and promotions team for haXe all in one. ;-) »» »» But haXe alone can't compete with Laszlo and Flex in some »» aspects. For example, just because these frameworks offer a »» XUL like attempt for fast developing GUIs. What I mean is, »» that both are using a declarative, xml-based programming »» language (MXML or LZX) sometimes mixed with some »» ECMA-Scripts. Of course Flex generates AS classes out of the »» MXML before compiling, but you don't have to bother about »» that all the time while you write nice apps. »» »» I have made a comparison of several workflows/frameworks (Laszlo VS. »» Flex (1.5 at that time) VS. Flash IDE VS. FAMES VS »» DHTML/XmlHttpRequest (AJAX)) in my diploma thesis, which is »» written in german. The biggest problem in comparing such »» workflow/frameworks is in setting up nice criteria in which »» one can compare them. I wrote the same calendar application »» using all of these workflows/frameworks. »» Interesting for me: I finished the application fastest with »» OpenLaszlo, which I had never used before. »» »» Don't get me wrong each workflow (also haXe) has its »» advantages and disadvantages. It depends on your »» problem/project definition. »» »» Matthias »» »» »» »» 2007/1/30, Nicolas Cannasse [EMAIL PROTECTED]: »» At this point, the only runtime Flex 2 targets is Flash »» Player 9/AS3. »» Laszlo targets FP7/AS2, plus Ajax/DHTML and soon Java »» ME. I believe »» Laszlo shows future development targeting FP9/AS3. »» »» »» BTW there's also haXe which targets FP6-7-8 and FP9 as well. »» http://haxe.org »» »» Nicolas »» ___ »» Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com »» To change your subscription options or search the archive: »» http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders »» »» Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software »» Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training »» http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com »» »» ___ »» Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com »» To change your subscription options or search the archive: »» http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders »» »» Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software »» Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training »» http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com »» »» ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
[Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
I am looking at both of these and they seem to be pretty similar. I was looking for people who have used both and the pros/cons of each. Also just a general overall opinion. Thanks. ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
Re: [Flashcoders] Flex vs. Laszlo
William, This came up on FlexCoders last month. Following is a link to a reply I posted there (that in turn includes links out to other sources): http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/59767 I am interested in a thorough comparison of Flex 2 vs Laszlo, so if anyone can provide a link I would appreciate it. Has anyone here actually used Laszlo? Can anyone provide first hand impressions? Following are a few more bits of what I have heard. Back in the Flex 1.x days the price difference between Flex and Laszlo was enormous. Since Adobe rationalized pricing with Flex 2, Laszlo's price advantage now is negligible. At this point, the only runtime Flex 2 targets is Flash Player 9/AS3. Laszlo targets FP7/AS2, plus Ajax/DHTML and soon Java ME. I believe Laszlo shows future development targeting FP9/AS3. From what I can tell, Laszlo has limited IDE support. Or at least not as robust a support as Flex Builder 2 provide for Flex 2 development. Back in 2005 an IBM alphaworks project was announced to provide Laszlo support in Eclipse: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo hth, g On 1/29/07, William Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am looking at both of these and they seem to be pretty similar. I was looking for people who have used both and the pros/cons of each. Also just a general overall opinion. Thanks. ___ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
