It’s not that we’re unhappy with how things are done now, but with the new Flex 4 and everything associated to it, I’ve felt that there’s an opportunity to make some improvements to our workflow.

Summing it up

As presented below, there are a few conclusions to be drawn here, for example:

• Flex 4 seems to be a really nice upgrade and probably something you can’t ignore in the end.
• There’s little information on the web about development of large Flash/RIA applications (like those we do). Pretty much all focus is on Flex development of small-to-medium sized applications. I’m not to speculate on the reasons why no one is spreading the word, but hope that my work can shed some light on the area.
• There’s a lot of fuzz around the Adobe products in general and Flex in particular. Very few seem to have any criticism at all when it comes to Flex, which is a bit disturbing, as nothing that looks too good to be true ever is. But maybe I’ve just been looking at the wrong side of the web? Just a reflection…

Presentation of findings

I held an in-house presentation on my findings yesterday, and I thought I’d better share it with the world (= your favourite search engine). I’ve stripped it down a bit, as there were some company specific things in there, but most of it is free for everyone to read.

A few things to consider before jumping in, though:

• This is a PowerPoint (well, OpenOffice actually) slide with notes. There was lots said when presenting each slide, so I can’t guarantee that you’ll learn everything I said. I understand this is not perfect, but figured that it’s better to upload this than nothing.
• It’s just plain slides with notes, really. I did have some imagery in the original slides, but left it out as it’s probably only needed as “distraction” when viewed on a large screen with me talking next to it. So don’t get mad if it’s boring!
• The plan wasn’t actually to hold an in-house presentation, but I figured it was a good idea. So the format on which it is presented may or may not be optimal, as it’s pretty much been summarized as I’ve went along. It could be a good idea to shape it up and make it a bit better, but at the moment, it’s more important just getting it “out there”.

The presentation itself

With that having been said – and my back having been covered – here it is (also available as a PDF):

[gview file="http://blog.sommestad.net/wp-content/2009/10/Catching_up_with_Flex_public.pdf" width=538]

EDIT: Also added the presentation to SlideShare.

Scott Delap shares his experience creating a lobby interface for an online game using Flex&Air. He details on related technologies used, available tooling and frameworks pros&cons, remoting options, unit, functional and load testing approach used.

To sum it up, it’s a good and elaborate presentation from a Java developer’s perspective, with reflections from a online multiplayer game development project. I enjoyed the full hour of watching it!

They’ve dealt with many of the questions we have and their conclusions are very interesting.

Presentation summary

I’ve summarized the most interesting contents of the presentation. They’re actually notes taken during the presentation, so please forgive any poor language or formatting:

• The Flex Builder WYSIWYG actually works, which isn’t common at all
• MVC in Flex is pretty much MVc, where the controller and view are sort of bundled together
• When choosing an MVC framework, Swiz turned out to be most interesting (among likes of Cairngorm, PureMVC etc). Swiz is similar to Spring with auto-wiring. Also supports Dependency Injection, Command Chains, and has MXML support even for non-views (i.e. for wiring the M:s, V:s and C:s).

Their MVC implementation:

• MXML for the views
• ActionScript for the controllers
• Remoting interfaces + specific back-end implementation
• Swiz wiring it all up
• They found no real reasons to use a “big MVC framework”, whereas Swiz did the job well enough

Remoting

Looked at several candidates, where WebORB, Hessian, XMPP, GraniteDS, Rest not weren’t considered enough for various reasons. Also evaluated BlazeDS, which doesn’t scale and has no NIO support.
Best candidate: LiveCycleDS - supports NIO, RTMP and lots of connections:

• Good for remoting Java <> Actionscript and easy to integrate
• Some Java <> ActionScript translations a bit problematic, i.e. enums and null values
• Some lack of documentation when it comes to messaging

Unit testing

• Evaluated ASUnit, FlexUnit, DpUnit/Fluint
• Chose Fluint, but could just as well have chosen FlexUnit. Unit testing Utilities, Controllers, Remoting Services with Mocks

Functional testing

• FlexMonkey not working properly with AIR and had a bit of lag
• Wrote a stripped-down version of Selenium

Load testing
Currently no good way of performing load testing.

• Hard to simulate 1000:s of users
• No really good tool for load testing at the moment

Final thoughts on Flex

• MXML works as advertised
• Easy to do complex things

• Dive deep into Flash Player 10 and Pixel Bender, with Tom Krcha.

• New Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flex (Gumbo), with Enrique Duvos.

• Adobe Flex/LC DC Integration, with Tom Krcha.

• Case: Min Boling/My Home, with Peter Molgaard.

My main interest was the (more) in-depth demo of Flash Catalyst and Flex, which I’ve been investigating quite a lot lately (and also given some more or less harsh comments on).

Flash Catalyst strikes back!

After today, I’m more impressed with the capabilities of Flash Catalyst – at least if it’s used properly. It was nice to hear Enrique emphasize that it was intended for the View part of the application (in an MVC app). Previously, I’ve interpreted the fuzz about Flash Catalyst as a replacement for the entire MVC model (basically a replacement of regular coding), but that’s not (necessarily) the case.

If we were to use FC purely as a tool for the View Components in our applications, we could really improve our productivity massively. But to me, it stops there. I would keep away from using the different “states” in FC, i.e. to create the various views in the app. Single-view only, please!

But it’s all on a pretty much theoretical level, really, as FC is still on a very early stage in its development (seems like we’re at least a year away from first real release). But it looks interesting, to say the least!

My notes from the seminar

I put down some notes on my mobile phone during the seminar. Maybe some rambling, but hHere it goes:

• Good to use Flash Catalyst – only for isolated components? Avoid using “states” in FC?
• What are the capabilities of FXG? What’s the syntax like?
• Does FXG “skin classes” (and likes thereof) be in MXML? Can regular AS classes be used instead?
• Can FXG code be imported to Flash Catalyst?
• How can Flex and FXG be combined with regular AS classes?
• Try putting more use to SWC files?
• How are SWC files used with Flex? How are component files (binaries) managed in Flex in general?
• Would Gumbo (new Flex Builder) be interesting to use?
• Take a look at Blaze DS for data services. Using HTTP protocol. RTMF to be used when more instant feedback needed.
• Have a look at Adobe AFCS.

All in all…

• Flash Catalyst seemed a lot more interesting in a live demo and I look forward to seeing the public beta (without expecting too much…) .
• PixelBender was really cool (a lot more cooler than its docs )!
• The presented “case”, My Home,  was very cool, but perhaps a bit Big Brothery. Doesn’t feel too secure…
• A good seminar; better than expected!