Flash (Flex) Programming on Linux & for Cheapskates

Have you ever wanted to program Flash, but haven't had the money to afford Adobe's tools? No problem!

Today I found out on Slashdot that there's a free Flex SDK from Adobe.

It is cross-platform, contains Windows binaries and Shell scripts + Java JAR files for other platforms. So it can basically run on any platform that supports the Korn Shell and has a Java runtime environment installed.

Download page
Developer documentation links (1)
Developer documentation links (2)
Full documentation (ZIP file)
EDIT: Video Tutorial (uses Flash Builder, but gives a good impression of MXML usage)
EDIT: Tour de Flex (web version)
In the full documentation package, there's a manual named "Using Adobe Flex 4" which is sufficient for getting started.

Many site resources advertise their commercial Flash Builder 4 for development, but you don't really need that if you're comfortable with development from the command line.

I successfully created, compiled and tested a simple "hello world" application, and this really looks good.

The Flex framework is apparently completely open-source now.

If you're interested, you can also check out the open-source Gnash project, which is available in all Linux and BSD repositories and can also be used for Flash development (especially if you target older versions of Flash).

 

Thanks for the info, I've never been a fan of flash but at least we have something to play with without spending a lot of money.

 

That's true ... I've never seen Flash as a truly multiplatform solution until today b/c I thought only the Flash player was ported to other platforms ...

What I want to use it for is to create some Flash games or apps just for seeing what you can do with it.

Perhaps Flash can serve as a fallback solution for sites using HTML 5 ... although the W3C claims that HTML 5 has already been rolled out to a large percentage of desktops, the question remains what to use in case HTML 5 isn't available.

Perhaps I'll write a tool to create MXML (Flex XML) and HTML 5 from the same source code.

BTW, with MXML, there is full portable source code for Flash animations for the first time (if something like that didn't exist before -- I'm a Flash n00b).

 

I think if I was going to spend the time learning flash, I would play with Silverlight more first.
I may be bias, I work in a microsoft shop, but from the little I've seen and messed with, I like it a lot more then flash.
I don't know if it could build games and stuff like that, but the only reason I would want something on my site like that, is if it was interactive and produced data of some sorts for the end user.

 

True, Silverlight is portable too ... it is called Moonlight on Linux (open-source version) ...

I'm not very happy with .NET (called Mono on Linux and open-source platforms) ... mainly b/c it suffers from the same design flaws leading to problems with upward compatibility as Java.

That is something that was mentioned by the Adobe guy in the article referenced by the Slashdot article I linked to. It's true that Flash is fully upward compatible, at least the SWF files.

When I write an application, I want to be able to never touch it again ... something that's impossible with Java or C#/.NET.

The best example for major design flaws in the way Microsoft implements frameworks is DirectX. Applications written for one version of DirectX don't necessarily run on a newer version.

Frameworks like SDL and/or OpenGL can alleviate some of the problems and can make apps portable too.

That's why some developers still prefer OpenGL over DirectX - b/c an OpenGL application will always keep working. SDL has been pretty upward compatible as well.

While Microsoft's development tools and documentation are often pretty good, Windows itself and related frameworks suck as a development platform ... that's one of the reasons why I've abandoned the Windows platform for personal use at least.

Choices of development framework, languages and tools are very important when you want to keep an eye on the lifetime of an application.

If you only want to write throw-away code that is used only for a short period of time, then these choices do not matter.

 

I added a link to the Flex 4 video tutorial to my original post.

The tutorial uses Flash 4 Builder, but gives a good impression of general MXML usage, since Flex 4 development is XML-based.

 

I added another link to the original post for the Tour de Flex showcase application (web version).

 

After a few days of messing with it ... :bulgy-eyes: ... :snail: ... I can say that okay, it absolutely is possible to use only the free tools for Flash development ... :snail: ... but it'll take a while ... Flash has its unique quirks ... you have to do everything by the book, or it won't work ... :snicker: ...

Basically, there's two ways now: You can do everything in MXML using very little ActionScript, or you can do everything in ActionScript.

Having the ActionScript reference manual and the Flex 4 User Manual open at all times is certainly helpful.

But it is really impressive how quickly you can achieve something ... :embarrassed: :moon:

Flex 4 has obviously been developed to emphasize on the development of business applications ... it does have some characteristics of a 4GL system now ...

I only want to write a game, though, so I have to figure out how to bypass some of the things intended for GUI applications or how to use them properly. :vampire:

It's really comical to see how they implemented their GUI stuff, it's all based on sprites, so everything is pretty quick and responsive!! I really like it!

 

Lookie here, I made a small intro for my new game! I'm slowly learning how to use Flex4 :snail: , next thing is I have to figure out how to create a game-like workflow with it.

EDIT: Updated intro (with rotating background, but there's still some bug in it )
EDIT: Updated intro (works now, intro almost finished! )

 

I don't know if I'll have time next week to work on the game, since I'm starting my new job, but here's the site with the intro (my "game preview" lol), source code included!