November 18th 2003 | Jens C Brynildsen

Macromedia announcing Flex (formerly Royale)

Macromedias new serverside SWF generation product was announced today. The product, formerly known as Royale, will fill a hole in the Macromedia software lineup.

Some time ago, Macromedia killed off Generator, their serverside SWF generation program. This left many developers in dispair as they had talked their clients into using the product to solve things as business graphics, and then the product was discontinued. There were several others to fill the void, like jGenerator and Swift Generator, but to many clients these solutions did not offer the support they required.

Flex is the name of the new product from Macromedia that allows for serverside generated SWF files. Flex is very different from Generator in the way that it cannot output images and video like Generator could. Flex can only output SWF files, but it can build them ground up on the server without the need for the 'handmade' templates required by Generator. Virtually all the things you can do with the Flash authoring program can be done on the server using the Flex serverside software and a new XML-based declarative language called MXML.

MXML supports ActionScript, components, classes, containers and more. These bits are written specifically for Flex, so that you can use most of the same components as in Flash such as dataconnectors, dropdowns and grids. You will be able to export serverside scripts directly from Flash using a special format. This will probably done be via an exporter made downloadable from Macromedia.com. That way, you can use Flash for rapid prototyping your Rich Internet Applications and then mix it with serverside logics later. Macromedia are also working on exporters for DreamWeaver (CodeName Brady) and IBM Eclipse (CodeName Partridge) to speed up the development process.

FLUX will initially be available on WinTel and Linux platforms with built-in support for J2EE servers such as IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and Macromedias own jRun while .NET support will arrive later. Once again, this is not a finished product being announced, but rather the announcement of a product that will soon enter a Public Beta. Macromedia Central was announced a long time before the Beta version arrived and it's the same with Flex.
Visit the Flex website to apply for the Beta.

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