[thelist] Rich Internet Applications

[John Dowdell]

Hershel Robinson wrote:
> ... are there 
> any comments anyone has to share regarding these tools? Any experience 
> or reviews or anything else that might prove helpful?

The Flex world is really hopping... lots of activity... you can track 
news, commentary, innovation here:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/index.cfm?searchterms=flex&query=bySimpleSearch&searchsortby=date

For conversation, the Flexcoders mailing list on Yahoo is the main spot, 
and has been averaging over a hundred messages a day (!) since Flex 2.0 
arrived at the end of June:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/

I'm not sure whether Spry might also help with your work... this 
JavaScript library offers easy interactivity within webpages which 
display XML-formatted data. It doesn't deal with changing data, however; 
you just pump in an XML file at the start and Spry helps the audience 
manipulate this data:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/



> There was also a video I saw 6 months ago which showed a demonstration 
> using Flex whereby a Flex app (a web page, that is) and Microsoft Excel 
> (open on someone's desktop) were both bound to the same data source and 
> updates to either app were reflected (the data was updated accordingly) 
> in the other app in real time (a small communications delay not 
> withstanding).

Clientside polling is one way to achieve refreshes. The serverside Flex 
Data Services allow for push and synchronization among varied clients. 
(Flex creation is free; an optional Eclipse plugin for development is 
US$500; the optional Flex Data Services pricetag varies with server 
configuration.) If your external data is exposed as a regular web 
service then things are much easier than with ad-hoc publishing styles.


jd







-- 
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
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