Flash versus Flex

Question

I\'ve tried looking everywhere for a concise list of the advantages and disadvantages of using Flex vs. Flash.

Coming from a programming background, I absolutely lo

Answer 1

Another solution that was not suggested at here, will be to use them both. You can add flex components to flash movie clips using ContainerMovieClip. And you can add flash movie clips to flex components using SpriteVisualElement. Another thing that wasn't mentioned was lay-outing your application. It will be flex pros against flash disadvantage, because you got build in flex lay-outing system. But again when you are using them both, you can layout your movie clips with flex lay-outing system.

Also flex become Apache top-level project. And it become more and more excepted by the community now.

Answer 2

I like the freedom of Flash, and its really simple to embed assets in Flash, a little more confusing to do in Flex.

One thing that I love about flex is the ability to make a fluid application with minimal effort. Which would take forever in Flash.

Anything you can do in flex you can do in flash, just may take a lot longer to do. You can't do everything in flex that you can do in flash though.

Flex takes care of all the UI programming for you and lets you focus on the business logic, with flash you will spend a majority of time programming the UI.

Answer 3

From a programmer's viewpoint, the big difference between Flash and Flex is not so much which IDE/application you use for programming, but whether you program in ActionScript (AS) only, or use the Flex framework and MXML to program your applications.

I would say pure ActionScript is better for programming (whether you use Flash IDE or Flex IDE is not that relevant), and MXML is better for non-programmers to combine the components programmed in AS.

I would add to your list these pros/cons:

Flex:

Pros:

• Easier for non-programmers to get into application development
• You can quickly combine components to create small applications
• Components can provide an advantage in large-scale projects

Cons:

• Customizing the look of components can take a lot longer than anticipated, depending on the visual style you're looking for
• When you find out you need a custom component that doesn't exist, you might need to go back to Flash to do the real programming work and packaging of the component
• The "flexibility" of Flex means you will be reading a lot of documentation
• Bugs in the Flex framework
• You eventually will need to compromise with the architecture of the Flex framework

Flash (or Flex IDE in ActionScript project mode):

Pros:

• Easier for someone with a programming background ;)
• You can program whatever you like; no compromises with existing frameworks

Cons:

• Timeline can be daunting for programmers (although you can quite safely ignore it)
• Development of certain types of applications will be slower than with Flex

In short: pick the right tool for the right task.

Answer 4

Flash and Flex are 2 complete different things, one is a design tool with support for action script, the other one is a framework that also has action script but is maily built around MXML which is a XML based UI definition "Language".

Answer 5

Target is different. Flex is more dedicated for programmer while Flash is more friendly to Artist / web designer.

Answer 6

You can develop Flex applications under Linux easily but with Flash you simply can't.