Ever wondered what $87 Billion looks like in cold-hard cash. Look no further, CrunchWeb has an interesting Perspective.

Figure 1.0: $87 Billion Dollars to Scale

Macromedia recently released version 1.5 of its presentation server otherwise known as Flex. Flex makes it easy for developers to provide rich, interactive interfaces for their complex web applications.

Target Audience

The good thing about flex is that all output is sent to the client through the flash SWF format. Flash player is currently installed on 98% of internet connected machines. This makes large and cross-platform deployments a breeze. Flex is also 100% native Java and can be deployed across all the major J2EE application servers including Apache Tomcat (apparently Macromedia has released plans about a .NET version too).

The IDE

Flex also has an IDE counterpart called Flex Builder (very creative naming schemes). Flex Builder is modelled on the success of Dreamweaver MX, hence includes the interface we are all very familiar with. It is possible to use Flex Builder for all your old Dreamweaver projects as your existing sites are imported and the default panel layout can be changed to resemble Dreamweaver. This is providing Dreamweaver MX is available on your machine.

Stock Components

Flex is bundled with the successful components from Flash MX 04 Professional. It also brings a few kids to the scene as well. Input forms with validation, buttons, data grids, trees, tabs and media players are all available for use.

The Language (MXML)

Once again Flex is a presentation server. It provides a layer to sit on top of existing dynamic data applications. The layout and control of your flex application is handled through Macromedia’s XML-based language called MXML (after its codename). MXML is a breeze to learn and compiles your Flex applications on the fly. It supports object caching to reduce load times on further requests.

Design Toolkit

Since primarily I am a developer, I am unable to evaluate the full design potential of Flex. However – you can see for yourself. Flex does have native support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I love the inclusion of CSS as it makes the transition from being a web developer quite easy. You can simply attach a CSS style sheet to your MXML code and control the layout and style of components using standard CSS classes and rules. CSS can completely ‘skin’ the look and feel of your application to your hearts content.

Licensing Options

Flex is a great application, but commercial-licensing starts at $12,000 for a dual-CPU setup. This is a big cost and discourages a large user base, not to mention a supportive community. Fortunately they created the non-commercial license where bloggers, educators and students can have access to a free Flex and Flex Builder license. Conclusion I think Flex is a powerful tool that needs to be made available to the larger portions of the market. The non-commercial license idea was indeed great to stimulate growth and development. I still feel that Flex is too tightly integrated with existing Macromedia products such as JRun. Flex should be more compatible with other popular programming languages other than Java. I hope to complete some powerful applications soon to test its full capability.

If your using Mozilla FireFox I found a method on the internet to increase surfing times. If your not using FireFox I strongly suggest you upgrade.

Steps

1. Start FireFox
2. Type “about:config” in the address bar
3. Find the following options, double-click to alter their value(s).

1. network.http.max-connections: 48

2. network.http.max-connections-per-server: 24

3. network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 12

4. network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 6

5. network.http.pipelining: true

6. network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 32

7. network.http.proxy.pipelining: true

Thats It! Speed changes may take a while to come into affect.

I’m a bit cut that I lost my Google Rank for ‘robsta‘ at number one. Therefore I have launched my own campaign to raise my search engine statistics. Quite simple, attract hits = position rises.

Reminds me 3 months ago when I was number one.