Currently I'm working on a large multi-user, communication-heavy project which uses Seam 2 and RichFaces 3.
It's been in development for about 5 weeks now.
I'm at a stage where I've found some limitations with RichFaces and will need to start using Seam Remoting to re-implement certain (major) functionality
If I'm not mistaken, Seam 3 has more advanced Remoting as opposed to Seam 2. I still think I might need to make use of RichFaces but with JSF 2.0 and Seam 3 offering greater Ajax support, it may be reduced.
Seeing that Seam 3 is in beta, I was wondering if it is worth migrating over and how stable it is at the moment.
There's at least a four to five more months of development left. Where do you envision Seam 3 to be at the end of that period?
Also, how have you found the migration process to be?
Any tips and experiences will be appreciated.
I would not use Seam 3 now, even if you think you have 4 - 5 months to go.
Its still very early beta, and things might get different, and lots of bugs might be there which will make your project extend even further.
However, what you can do is use Java EE 6 with JSF 2 and Richfaces 4 (Or Primefaces which I would prefer), and then only use the Remoting module of Seam, which should be pretty stable enough.
Then you can slowly migrate towards Seam 3 when it becomes more stable.
Alternatively, stick with jQuery and Seam 2 Remoting
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We have a very big application which built on flex 3 SDK. What are all the pros and cons if we don't migrate and continue using flex 3 SDK.
Here are some questions:
1.Can we sustain without migrating from flex 3 to flex 4 for at least 5 years?
2.Can we upgrade to Flash Builder 4.6 + SDK 4.11 ?(but continue to run the flash builder in backward compatibility mode)
3.Is there any future support issues for application that are built on Flex 3 SDK.
Here are some points i read in stackoverflow:
If Adobe didn't seem to be pushing so hard for us NOT to use Halo, I think I'd be comfortable with that. But since they say in the actual docs that we "shouldn't use such and such" Halo components and should use the Spark ones instead, it's worrisome. It also seems like support for Halo in FB has become an afterthought (I can't get design mode to display a Halo style, even with Halo selected as the theme), so Adobe's making it difficult just to continue using it. Personally I don't see why we can't have two parallel component sets since Halo's design may work better in some use-cases. – Crusader Aug 21 '10 at 2:59
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Actually the wording Adobe authoritatively uses (say if you're going to use "Canvas") is "use spark.components.BorderContainer instead". Well what if we don't want to? They haven't explained why we should use Spark instead, and due to it's "half complete" status now with tons of missing components, I don't really like the idea of almost guaranteeing maintenance work and updates needed to my code once SDK 5 comes out. On the other hand if we just use Halo permanently (assuming Adobe isn't going to pull the rug from it later, who knows), the code is "done" the first time. Frustrating
Thanks in advance.
Two things I particularly like with Flex4 in contrast to Flex3 (No matter if Adobe or Apache Flex) is that the new Flex4 components (Called Spark components) are much more lightweight implementations. The coolest new concept introduced with Flex4 however are the skinnable components.
It allows you to implement your components completely independent from the look & feel of the component (Skin). You can locate a components skin in separate modules which allows you to implement an application and depending on the client to load a "desktop", "android", "ios" or whatsoever skin-module which completely changes how your component looks and is used. Most skinning approaches of other frameworks merely allow one skin or can only change the formatting (colory, borders, margins, font sizes). In flex you could have a dialog displaying 20 Input fields at once in the desktop skin, but on mobile one, you have a step-by-step wizard approach only displaying 5 of them per page (just as an example).
Especially with the FalconJS initialive at Apache Flex it will be possible to have the compiler generate not only flash, but also a HTML+JS+CSS based output. I doubt this will be possible for the old Flex3 components.
The downside is that if you get used to Flex4 and you have to work with any other technology, you will be missing a lot of stuff. I at least got addicted to some of the concepts pretty fast.
Adobe Flex 4 is dying, Adobe Flex 3 is already dead (hard to find developers, no patches, no new frameworks etc...), the only option I think is durable is to migrate to Apache Flex 4 as Adobe has stopped developping Flex and given it to Apache that actually has upgraded it on some points.
For the "Halo" case, if you want to use it in Flex 4 with your Flex 3 codebase you will probably get troubles such as layouts / fonts / texts that will need to be fixed. This is due to a change in font management in widgets and on some components whose properties have changed.
Also, the dependencies have changed in the SDK, be careful with produced swc as they can sometimes be only compatible with Flex 3 of only with Flex 4 (which is a pain). It will be more and more difficult to find libraries that will work with Flex 3!
There was a question a few months ago on Flex 3 with FB debug not working anymore with last Flash Player Debug, I don't know if you met this case.
To sum up, Flex 3 is already deprecated and Adobe won't support it anymore, maybe Apache will but it is not their main aim. Even Flash Builder development could be stopped, be warned. There are alternatives such as Flash Develop or Intellij hopefully.
I do agree mostly with the mail above about FLEX 3 as such it seem to be dead if it comes to the web item yet I myself will continue using it as long as it is possible! OK there mite be not much new yet I think that it has still enough life in it. People just talk too much about it all yet without that there are or where many Application on the web which seem to be build in FLEX!
I just saw on a German FLEX forum something Interesting which mentioned the very same as here discussed, but what came up and what I did not knew was that the FLEX AIR Application development is still with ADOBE & that it is fully further developed by them even so they gave FLEX itself away! regards aktell
I had many issues found in migration from Flex 3 to Flex 4. I had done some logic in flex 3 but while migrating the same code to flex4 it is not working. Please help me out how to do the exact migrating or have any tool for migrating the code from flex3 to flex 4.
There are many advantages of Flex 4, one of which is Skinning, which is a huge plus for code reuse but also separation of concerns (separate the view/styling from the component behavior). There's also FXG (mxml based vectors) that can be used with Catalyst to easily skin components from illustrator.
Flex 4 is definitely the future and what you should strive for, but it does bring forth a lot of changes, so the con here is that it's very hard to convert a Flex 3 app to Flex 4 without redoing some code. It's a different mentality altogether and it needs to be adhered.
There are no quick tool to convert your component logic.
On my expirience most of the things I had to fix on my project when migrated to Flex 4 were related to parts of code that were actually work arounds for some strange behaviour with scaling/resizing of components in Flex 3, which was resolved in Flex 4. Overly it wasn't hard, there are no major changes in logic, just improvements and some bugs fixed, and possibly few new bugs made :)
When migrating to Flex 4 it's not neccessary to change your components to Spark ones, you can still use your MX structure.
New components use a different layout, you build them a bit differently
* you cant use Spark's ComboBox/DropDownList as in MX, since you need IList objects as data provider
* Resize/Scale and measures work as they should now, in both MX and Spark components
* you can't add directly some of MX components to Spark containers as you could in Flex 3
* you use addElement instead addChild for Spark components
* in Flex 4 they introduced FTE, with superior text render quality, lifting the limit of 127px font size, but now if you embed fonts on runtime (I do) you have to use CFF flag
I think that migrating to Flex 4 worth the hassle, just if you decide to use the latest SDK build (4.5) you may encounter some issues, 4.1 is a safer call at the moment, tho I'm using 4.5 knowing of the risks.
I have an app built in flex 3.2, and would like to start using some spark components within that same app. Are there any pitfalls to look out for.
Is it possible to use the old 3.2 components in the same app or Will I have to rebuild them.
Would like to get the heads up from anyone that has done the same, before I make the plunge.
Thanks
This post has some pretty good info - Migrating to Flex 4
You may run into some small issues with mixing and matching Halo/Spark components when it comes to some of the layouts, but in general they work pretty well together side by side.
The major issue is CSS because the Spark components are less CSS-friendly than Halo.
=Ryan
AFAIK, custom components extending / based on Halo components of Flex 3.2 will continue to work as will the default Halo components.
I apologize for making my first question not the hard-hitting code-related question I was hoping for, so I apologize if this question is out of bounds of SO:
I'd like to get started with Adobe Flex development. I've seen that there's been a Beta 2 of Flex 4 available since October (with Flex 4 supposedly being "even better!" than Flex 3, naturally), but obviously, most learning material (books, on-line tutorials etc.) available seem to focus on Flex 3.
This makes me a bit unsure about which version to go with in order to get started.
I realize Flex 3 would be the safer bet, but maybe Flex 4 is already stable enough? I would very much appreciate pointers from developers more experienced with the technology.
Thanks,
Hendrik
It depends on whether you think you need any of the new features for your particular application:
Remote services – autogeneration of
data models.
Flash CS4 support
Event handler autogeneration
Declarative graphics
Unit testing, Network monitor
If you don't need any of these, Flex 3 is the clear choice.
http://www.psyked.co.uk/adobe/flex/talking-about-flex-gumbo-new-features.htm
I don't know if it's so much a question of stability but one of market penetration. As you said most learning resources out there focus on Flex 3. That said the Adobe Devnet is filling up with new tutorials and resources for Flex 4.
I haven't moved towards Flex 4 because the libraries are targeted latest versions Flash and AIR, and my apps need to be targeted for older versions of the these runtimes. That and I have all the features I need using the Flex 3 along with FlexUnit, Degrafa, and other third party libraries.
I have starting with flash builder with the beta 1!!!! It's much better/easier/nicer as Flex Builder... But the important think is u can use the new sdk!!!!
that's much more iportant... because in the new compantents has many change u have in sdk 3 some components what u can't use in sdk 4...
so my result:
use the new flash builder and use the imortant think SDK 4 ;)
I'm beginning to learn flex, and it seems that now is right around the time when the sdk is moving from v3 to v4. I'm noticing that there's not much support or tutorials for the v4 sdk, or maybe it's just me. Is it too early to use the v4 sdk? have most people not caught up with it yet?
If you're not releasing a 'for real' product soon, I personally would go with Flex 4. Obviously, it's still in beta and things change frequently in the nightly builds (which is kind of fun ;-); in fact, a major namespace changed not too many builds ago. However, if you're just starting and have some time, the Spark framework components seem to me to be much 'lighter' and certainly separate the logic from the skin styling in a very nice understandable way. If you want to play a bit, Google "Flex 4 Beta in a Week" and work through the exercises.
On the other hand, if you've not done much OOP or Flash programming before, I'll vote for Flex 3 too as there's a ton of resources out there.
If you are learning, then I think it is good to stick with version 3 since, as you say, there are more tutorials and support for it. I don't see any problems in transitioning to version 4 when it is released or you feel comfortable with using software that is still being developed.
If you haven't started working with the Flex Framework yet, its best you start with Flex 4. There has been a major namespace change, but its for the better. You can also integrate other cool Adobe tools like Flash Catalyst only with the new Flash Builder.