http://blog.arc90.com/2006/07/10_reasons_we_love_flex_2.php

As the Adobe and Flash communities probably already know, Adobe's Flex platform was released recently. For the unfamiliar, Flex is a development environment that allows developers to build web applications replete with business rules, layout capabilities and other goodies that compile to Flash. The result can be a really compelling, rich end-user experience. We all know that AJAX gets all the buzz these days. We do plenty of AJAX work here at Arc90. But we’re also loving Flex 2. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. No More Browser Compliance Testing! One thing about AJAX, it’s more complicated than plain ol’ XHTML and some CSS. Browser compatibility testing goes from a bad dream to a nightmare. Since Flex apps compile to Flash SWF files, they are identical down to the pixel, no matter which browser or operating system you’re using.
2. E4X. Anyone who’s parsed XML knows the pain of parsers. Flex 2’s version of Actionscript includes Ecmascript for XML or E4X. It makes walking an XML object way easier by treating XML as a primitive. Take a look at these simple examples. Sweet.
3. No More Interface Layout Pain. We’ve all been there. Anyone who’s committed to CSS for layout knows the pain in attempting to properly lay out those DIV tags. It’s painful. With the Flex markup language’s (MXML) container-based, it’s far simpler to lay out both fixed and liquid designs to predictable results.
4. Simple Field Validation. Anyone’s who’s built business or eCommerce applications has dealt with form field validation. Zip codes. Credit card numbers. They’re all built right in and very easy to use.
5. Rich Media Support. The Flash platform has absolutely blind-sided the previously dominant media players on the Web (Real, Windows Media). It is light and works without installing this or that. Flex makes it simple to embed both audio and video content right into your applications.
6. True Seperation of Presentation and Content. For years, developers have extolled the virtues of separating data from presentation. Of course, in the Web world, it’s far easier said than done. The great majority of web apps are templates wired to some form of dynamic content. With Flex, data is neatly drawn in from wherever (simple XML, SOAP, etc.) and bound to interface elements. This forces a more rigid separation. Your servers now just deliver content. When you’re done, you not only have an application, you have an API.
7. The Flex Development Environment. Any Javascript developer knows the pains of developing AJAX/JS applications. Debugging is tough and there really are no established visual development environments for AJAX/Javascript work. Flex Builder 2 is the Flex visual programming environment that has all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from industrial grade IDE’s like Visual Studio and JBuilder. It’s built on top of the Eclipse IDE platform.
8. CSS Survives! We’ve got some serious CSS talent here at Arc90 and we are psyched to see that many of the styling capabilities of Flex are still handled through CSS. Colors. Fonts. Gradients. Those CSS skills can still be applied to skin and customize your Flex applications. Take a look at the Flex Style Explorer to get a sense of Flex’s CSS capabilities.
9. Adobe Apollo. Who said we were just building web applications? Adobe’s got grander plans than your web browser and we’re already along for the ride. Adobe’s Apollo project brings these richer experiences right to the desktop. Apollo is still in development, but you can take a sneak peak at some early screenshots here. You can learn more about Apollo here.
10. It’s Cheap! Ok, it’s not as cheap as AJAX (which is technically free) but the support and developer tools available make it well worth the money. Flex used to be a server product that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 per CPU. Today, all you need to buy are the developer tools to get started (Flex Builder costs $499).

So there you have it. 10 reasons why we’re showing Flex love these days. We’ve been in lock-step with the Flex beta for over 8 months now and are developing some seriously powerful applications on Flex. We’ll hopefully be able to unwrap our work soon to share it with everyone.