Microsoft developer, it’s time to take a look at Flex (short 15 minute video demonstration). The 2.0 alpha was released, you can read about it and download it here. I can do nothing better than pointing you at the demos available on the Macromedia Labs site (worth browsing for a bit). Make sure before checking out the 4 demos (including some useful code to give you an idea of what it takes), to install the Flash 8.5 player (alpha), also available from the same site.
Takeaways:
* Fast UI development with a really polished look-and-feel–bar none, the best looking UI you can slap on your .NET application, WinForm OR Web
* No longer requires the Flex server–simply compile, drop the SWF file in an IIS site, serve it up.
* Nice webservice integration to leave your business/service logic in C#
When you consider it, Flash players are everywhere. The download is smaller than the .NET Framework, probably smaller than WPF/E (I’m just guessing). Sure, WPF will be cleaner and sharper when its done, but that’s the thing–Flex is here now if you don’t mind 1.5. And when WPF/E arrives, perhaps a Flex/MXML to XAML converter (why not?) would take you some of the way.
If you do one thing this week, click on those links, download, give it a try.
