Macromedia Aims To Woo Enterprise Developers With Flex

Macromedia Flex, formerly code-named Royale, provides a presentation server that allows developers to code multimedia applications through an XML-based language, said Rod Hodgeman, vice president of product management for Macromedia. The product is scheduled to ship in the first half of next year.

Flex uses its XML-based language, FML, to compile applications and deliver them in binary code to the Flash player, which runs on the client, Hodgeman said.

The binary contains all of the code necessary to run an application that takes advantage of rich multimedia on the client through the Flash player, precluding the need to call back to the server for information, he said.

This enables developers to quickly and easily produce network-based applications that present a user experience similar to that of applications that run locally on the client, without the slow page loads that can occur when rich media applications run on the Web.

The Flex development environment is set up to be friendly to developers who use integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Borland JBuilder or Visual Studio.NET, Hodgeman said. Macromedia hopes Flex will encourage enterprise developers to build rich Internet applications, which currently are created mainly by creative Web designers, not hard-core coders.

Following the release of Flex, Macromedia will update Dreamweaver with visual design and code authoring for Flex through a project code-named Brady, Hodgeman said. Macromedia will provide similar technology to the Eclipse Framework through IBM's Eclipse open-source project around the same time through Project Partridge, he added.

Solution providers said they welcome a product such as Flex as a way to bring rich multimedia applications to the enterprise through an environment developers working in languages like Java and C# can understand.

"The type of tools a developer works in are different from [tools] of a creative person designing for [presentation] on the Web," said Darin Brown, executive vice president of marketing and strategy for New York-based solution provider The SBI Group.

Brown said Macromedia Flex can "bridge the gap" between these two types of developers, allowing them to provide a better user experience overall for customers accessing enterprise applications.

"Projects require developers of mixed backgrounds and skills," agreed Jim Burke, president of Boston-based solution provider Mindseye. "Flex and Flash users can now work side-by-side, with each user leveraging their specific expertise. The Flash user can focus on the more interactive, graphical aspects of development, and the Flex developer can focus on connecting the UI to the business application logic."

In addition, because the core language of Flex is based on XML, the product allows for easier integration of rich front-end presentation to back-end systems, giving enterprise applications the opportunity to have multimedia design features in their user interfaces, Brown said.