Are there any clean ways to implement a server-side Flex/AIR app? The basic idea is that a large Flex app would run off a server. A user would then see client-side only the current view of the Flex app and be able to interact with it. The interactions would be sent to the server, and it would process them accordingly. The overall goal of this is to not force the client to download a very large Flex app just to use the application.
NO. And this is a ridiculous idea. Why wouldn't you just use Flashplayer as a delivery device?
You will bog down the server. No way you'd want to manage flex app instances. NO. do not do this. What, you gonna give each person an RDP to a virtual server running it's own flex app? hahahahahahah
if you need collaboration, setup an RTMP server.
What is the best free game server for a game developed in Flex 4?
Is it possible to make the server using other programming languages?
The server should not be developed using Flex 4, it's not made for..
Take a look at BlazeDS for Flex interactions.
Flex will integrate with any remote server of your choice. What you want depends on what type of games you want to build. If you just want a single player casual game, then any server will work for that. .NET is the only server side platform I know that supports multiple languages.
If you want to create a multiplayer game, then you probably want to look into a media server.
Red5 is an open source free option. Flash Media Server is an Adobe option, but I don't know if there is a free version.
GraniteDS is similar to BlazeDS and/or LiveCycle. It supports server side push, so the server can push data to the client.
Also, for more resources on developing Flash Platform Games, check out Adobe's Resource Center for game development.
Is there a way to make a desktop application easily interfaceable via Web ? Meaning, can you have a way to interface with a single desktop application as if you were remote desktop'd into the machine but not? I am looking at doing this in ASP.NET or Silverlight.
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for...
If you were able to create your entire application UI in Silverlight and host it properly (in IIS or whatever) it would then be accessible from anywhere on the web. If you needed the perception of a real desktop app when running locally, you could then just make some simple app (WinForms, WPF, whatever) which contains a web browser control that could also load up the hosted Silverlight app (and just be a transparent browser). Depending on what the application is doing, you would obviously need some sort of service layer (probably in WCF) do to all of the heavy lifting and data access.
I guess the main question would be: can you accomplish everything your application needs to do in Silverlight? Since Silverlight is meant to run in a browser, it can be very limiting.
There are many solutions based on plugins. Some of the popular ones:
Citrix
Spoon
If you're ok with plugins, but only if they're common ones (flash, java), there are various solutions:
http://www.wizhelp.com/flashlight-vnc/
http://www.tightvnc.com/doc/java/README.txt (bundled java applet with TightVNC)
If you don't want plugins at all, there's an experimental HTML5/javascript VNC viewer:
http://guacamole.sourceforge.net/
I don't understand the purpose of the WPF browser appliction. Is it simply another way of serving information through a browser, or is it not intended to be used for external deployment?
WPF Browser applications allow you to create very rich, application style UI's deployable via the web, using coding languages windows developers already likely have in their toolset. The downsides are that the users must must have .net installed, and use IE to access the application, considerably limiting the size and scope of your audience. WPF browser applications are very similar to Java applications in that they run in a virtual machine on the client. As it runs on the client, all data access and communication with the server must be done through WCF or web services.
With ASP.NET you have considerably more cross browser compatibility and support, giving you access to a much larger audience, with the possible downside of learning new libraries and the ASP.NET programming model. ASP.NET also provides a rich data access model and data control support. Silverlight is another interesting option based on .NET and WPF, as it is supported by a wide variety of browsers and provides similar rich user interface experiences. It can als be run out of the browser, disconnected if neccesary.
** Update based on Comment Request ***
The big advantage to Silverlight out of browser, is that you get most of the Rich, windows application style functionality, with a web deployable model and tiny install (4-6MB). Silverlight also supports an auto update feature which is VERY nice if you have a large user base.
Microsoft's Official description (propaganda :) )here
Silverlight Out Of Browser
Enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience. Features include:
Safe and secure. Leveraging the security features of the .NET Framework, Silverlight applications run inside a secure sandbox with persistent isolated storage. These applications have most of the same security restrictions as traditional web apps and so can be trusted without security warnings or prompts, minimizing user interruptions.
Smooth installation. Because Silverlight applications are stored in a local cache and do not require extra privileges to run, the installation process is quick and efficient.
Auto-update. Upon launch, Silverlight applications can check for new versions on the server, and automatically update if one is found.
Internet connectivity detection. Silverlight applications can now detect whether they have Internet connectivity and can react intelligently including caching a users’ data until their connection is restored.
A WPF browser application is a client side technology, rather than ASP(.NET) which is server-side. It is definitely not meant to replace it.
Using a WPF browser application one can provide a rich client inside the browser. However, this will only work when the whole .NET framework is installed. Another similar technology is Silverlight, which uses a very small (the installer about 5-6 MiB) framework, and is available to multiple platforms. It includes a small subset of .NET framework.
You can use it in external deployment considering the above requirements.
The following portion of the above selected comment is wrong:
and use IE to access the application,
considerably limiting the size and
scope of your audience
WPF in the browser (aka XBAP) is works just from FireFox (Mozilla) and Google Chrome. It was true about 2 years ago, but not today.
You could use XAML in silverlight, if thats what you are looking for.
Plus the RIA Application templates makes development quite neat.
What is the difference between Adobe AIR and FLEX?
The "Flex Framework" is a collection of AS3 classes and components used in developing RIAs.
"Flex Builder" is an IDE used to develop "Flex Applications."
Much in the same way HTML is a collection of tags to develop web pages and Dreamweaver is an IDE for developing web pages. However you don't need Dreamweaver, you can use Notepad, BBEdit, etc. as well.
If you use something other than Flex Builder to develop in Flex, you need to download the Flex SDK to compile. The end result of a compiled Flex Application is an SWF file (Same as Flash).
With the compiled SWF file, a user only needs to have Flash Player installed to run the application.
Most Flex apps are developed, deployed to a server and then a web browser is used to serve the application to the user for use.
I haven't used AIR yet so I don't know what the end product of a compliled AIR Application is, but AIR is an alternative delivery system for Flex Applications, replacing the web server and browser so to speak. It's primary purpose is for deploying RIAs to a user's desktop, independant of an internet connection.
AIR, also allows for the use of HTML, AJAX etc. So an AIR Application could be a collection of all these things, compiled together.
To run an AIR Application, you need AIR Runtime installed on your computer.
Source
AIR is not a superset of Flex.
Adobe AIR is essentially Webkit, Flash, Javascript, Flex, XHTML, CSS, sqlLite.
The applications for air are primarily developed in ECMA. (Actionscript/Javascript). Most AIR applications out and about in the world right now consist of Javascript, xhtml, images, and sqllite.
The Actionscript engine has been extended for AIR to support disk IO and other 'local' system functionality. This allows your application to act just like a normal system application. Although most people are storing their data in sqlLite and rarely write to disk for anything other than logging. (From what I've noticed/read)
Regardless, there isn't a ton of Flex going on in AIR or the AIR community. From what I've noticed its a lot of Javascript/Flash/XHTML people making small apps that run on multi-os through the AIR runtime.
I'd add to Garry's (excellent!) answer by saying it sort of depends on what you're asking. There are conceptual differences and specific differences. Garry's answer details a handful of the specifics.
Conceptually, though, AIR is a superset of Flex, and Flex is a superset of Flash.
A Flash-authored SWF generally (though not always -- but most of the time) runs in a Web browser and is composed of ActionScript code. A Flex-authored SWF also runs in a Web browser (or again, some comparable container) and is composed of ActionScript code, but usually also takes advantage of the Flex framework, which is essentially a bunch of ActionScript classes provided by Adobe to assist developers in building more feature-rich Flash-based applications. AIR, finally, is Flex running on the desktop -- it's Flash-plus-Flex, plus some additional desktop-oriented facilities that allow SWFs authored in either Flash or Flex to be installed and run as desktop applications.
Excellent posts. As a side note, I'd like to add that unlike Flex/Flash SWFs, AIR SWFs cannot, and I repeat, can not be played in a browser. AIR SWFs need their own little sandboxes to run in (that the run time provides).
There are two runtime Flash Platforms one is Flash Player and other Adobe AIR(Adobe Integrated Runtime). Adobe Flash Player is a highly expressive cross-platform runtime that works across all the browsers which have the Flay Player plugin. Flash Player delivers the SWF files that runs within the browser, while AIR delivers the .air standalone applications that run on desktop outside the browsers.
You can find more details about AIR & Flash from here: http://readymadeflash.com/blogs/what-is-the-difference-between-adobe-AIR-and-flash.html
I was under the impression porting flex to air was simple => http://forums.adobe.com/message/2887004
My understanding is that in theory your app should work with only one real change required.
Of course now I have to test this theory...
I would be very exicted if I could retain all of the power of flex, and then gain the HTML Control and the Update Framework since thats all flex is really missing to be all powerful.
Off to experiment.
To understand Flex and Air you need to understand the whole Adobe Flash Platform. Flash is overloaded to mean many things, the Flash platform, the runtime, the runtime API, and the IDE.
Adobe Flash Platform - a broad term that includes everything else
Runtimes:
Adobe Flash Player - the plugin you install on web browser, supports Flash API
Adobe Air Runtime - another plugin you install run as desktop application, supports Air API (a superset of Flash API)
APIs:
ActionScript - backend with either Flash API or Air API, you can choose which API to compile your application with, and it will run on respective runtime. AS works with both Flash UI or Flex UI
UI - Flash component (proprietary fla format) or Flex Framework (XML based)
IDEs:
Adobe Flash Pro (CS4/5/6/CC) - work with Flash projects
Flash Builder - work with Flex projects
Flex is a framework that is used to render content on Flash player, mostly for Enterprise Applications. AIR is a runtime which wraps flex, flash and/or html in a package that can be accessed on a desktop without the use of browser, so that a user can get desktop (like accessing directories, interacting with system chrome, etc...) in addition to giving the user the web feeling (accessing http requests, rendering html, calling web services, etc...).
This is a good comparison thread! I've just built a series of AIR apps for several museum installs. AIR apps are just that...Standalone, compiled and optimized applications, wrapped in it's own installer. It's a rather versatile wrapper in that it will compile a bevy of codes, if you play your cards right. You could essentially build a website, and then crush it all into a desktop application. Because it runs locally, it also has the ability to bypass Flash's security protocols (something I'm not sure Flex is capable of). This allows you to access a whole different level of functionality when it comes to seamlessly linking apps, displays, input/output, etc.
Thusly, you can wrap FLEX builds within an AIR app... Adobes AIR dev center breaks everything down pretty thoroughly, and be sure to read through the adobe livedocs as well!
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=Part5_AIR_1.html