Separation of Duties

So there are quite a few people comparing AJAX & HTML CSS technologies to Flex & Apollo at the moment.

My opinion is that if you are building a web application that contains content that doesn't need to be Google searchable you should seriously consider using Flex, especially if you are lucky enough to have dedicated developers and designers. There is a good article on Adobe.com that discusses this. It just makes sense, you can totally separate the development of your business logic from the presentation. You have the flexibility to get your analysts and designers on the ball while your developers are elsewhere. Or if the most important requirements are known and your designers are busy you can get your developers going on the business logic before the designers attack the interface.

Ok, so your customers will need to have Flash Player 9, so what, they can download it in 20 seconds and chances are they will already have it with adoption rates going through the roof. Flash Player 9 works within all the main browsers on Win, Mac and Linux.

Now on the other hand, if your content needs to be Google searchable, needs to be easily bookmarkable and doesn't contain state then HTML/CSS/AJAX is probably the better way to go. For sure you can wrestle your way to get bookmarks and state working but its not nice.

I predict we will see a closing of the gap soon as Mozilla starts to play with the donated AVM2 code from Adobe so that apps will be developed in a markup similar to MXML and be compiled at runtime so that content is fully Google searchable.

So its a safe bet investing the time learning to use the Flex platform. To close the door on Flex would be unwise for any software developmement company.

Am I biased? Not at all. I'm currently building websites using HTML+AJAX+JAVA and apps using FLEX+JAVA.

I welcome any comments.