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Rehashing an older post: JQuery VS Flex - Choosing a Platform for SAAS

We are preparing to develop an application that is exceptionally dynamic and interactive. It's particularly heavy on the graphics side.

We are 85% convinced that Adobe Flash built atop Flex is the right path to take, however Cappuccino is quite nice and seems as though it may be able to nearly fit the bill.

The only pause we have right now is portability for the iPhone. With the lack of blessings from Apple we will most certainly have to create a 2nd interface for the iPhone for the site, however... Having two interfaces may not be bad as it will likely have to be custom anyway to take advantage of the differences that it affords.

Any further thoughts or reevaluations of points enumerated in the noted article? Further, Flex 4 adds a lot of strength to the position mentioned previously regarding UI development. Fx4 is very nice vs Fx3 and shaves 90% from the development time when coupled with Flash Catalyst, which is not really always fully appropriate, but with some round trip tricks it seems as though it can cut through things rather well...

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ylluminate
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    another nice framework worth checking out is SproutCore - http://www.sproutcore.com/. Apparently Apple used this for their MobileMe product (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/06/sproutcore-rich-web-apps-in-javascript-no-flash-needed.ars). – Anurag Apr 19 '10 at 20:16
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    Right, I have looked at sproutcore a bit. I personally don't like it as much as cappuccino as the paradigm for cappuccino is cleaner and more appealing for app dev. – ylluminate Apr 22 '10 at 14:11
  • One nice thing about Cappuccino is that your code is highly reusable in an Objective-C world. So, if you do have to have 2 interfaces: one for iPhone one for not, a bunch of that code will work on both platforms. People already do this with Mac OS X code that they share between Mac and Web Apps with Cocoa/Cappuccino – Francisco Ryan Tolmasky I Apr 30 '10 at 23:01

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HTML and Flash they both have limitation. You have to choose the right tool depends your project need.

HTML limitation

  • Not all browser will render the same. The more complex you get the more difference you will see. Try ie6,7,8,9
  • Some new HTML5 feature are browser specific. Don't expect Chrome experiment to run on all browser.
  • Rapidly changing with new feature, may need to upgrade and refactor code more regularly

Flash limitation

  • more CPU/memory intensive.
  • need Flash plugin.
  • Don't expect to run on iphone, ipad.

So if you have a simple UI project and only need to support 2 browser, you probably want to use HTML. If you need to support most browser out there and you don't care about the iphone, ipad. Flash is the right tool.

I have seen company actually have both engine to support every single platform. HTML and FLash is just a different tool. One cannot replace the other as of now.

jkc
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IMO, it's a choice between a proprietary technology (Flash/Flex) and standards-based technology (Javascript/DHTML). If you're concerned about your web app running on as many platforms as possible, the choice is crystal clear.

Flash is dying (but that's just my personal opinion). Not because Apple doesn't want it, but because it hasn't evolved like the other web technologies. It's slow, big, eats up CPU and memory, and above all, it requires that the user installs a plugin built by one single company.

Philippe Leybaert
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  • Hmm. Well I don't think Flash is dying. 10.1 is pretty nice and performant. A well designed Flash app seems to run as good as an HTML5/JS app and in many cases I've seen better. There are open source alternatives such as gnashdev.org that actually work surprisingly well when you have source control. I know some folks who have deployed with this to great success. I really want to steer clear of the "Flash is dying" discussion and discuss technical points on this. – ylluminate Apr 22 '10 at 14:06
  • I think everyone here is simply saying its not a safe long term bet. And if you are involved with some kind of startup , investors or buyers are going to have the same view. If everyones opinion is that it is no longer viable, then it becomes a self for-fulling prophecy. – James Westgate Apr 22 '10 at 15:23
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I would always go with javascript over Flash, simply because it performs better. Flash in Internet Explorer on Windows performs well. Flash in Firefox is quite a bit worse, and Flash in Firefox in OS X is just pathetic. This is especially an issue on laptops as Flash is quite CPU intensive. So you might have a fancy webpage, but the computer sounds like an airplane because the CPU is overheating.

While Flash can do some really fancy effects, jquery and similar frameworks has moderately fancy animation effects, which is usually enough for web applications.

Decko
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  • Performs better? That doesn't seem the case for things like games. I've actually evaluated a number of libs and JS games folks have made and they are just not there yet. The app I'm building, while not a game, is very comparable in performance needs and interactivity, including the benefit that accelerated graphics would provide. Is this possible with JS? So I guess that is the answer in your last line: JS cannot get fancy enough yet and does not have sufficient graphic acceleration to solve this problem. – ylluminate Apr 22 '10 at 14:10
  • I cant agree that js performs better over flash (on the pc anyway) – James Westgate Apr 22 '10 at 15:23
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HTML 5 and javascript would be the way to go imho. Restrict the browsers to the latest and greatest if you have to.

EDIT: I guess the js frameworks are not quite there, but are probably very close. You would be on the bleeding edge which is not always good for project deadlines. I think people feel that the effort is worth it because of duplicated effort for iphone/ipad and that it is a solid foundation for the future. Look at libraries like http://raphaeljs.com/ and sites like http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ before making a decision

James Westgate
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  • Well, can we get technical? I don't see any foundation in the remarks like I've seen in other threads. I want to really dig deep here. From my standpoint Flash at the moment is I think the winner as this is a highly interactive environment and from all that I've seen JavaScript cannot yet handle the demands that we'll likely throw at it (testing Chrome, Safari FF). For example, game development on JS is still very labored and not mature and this will have a lot of that interactivity involved. – ylluminate Apr 22 '10 at 14:08
  • Thanks again. We found Flash/Flex to be much more mature and robust and capable of fitting the bill beyond JS options at the moment. Yes, it would have been good to be able to use JS for the lack of duplication, but there are so many small things, and a few big ones, that are not implemented yet and have no real tangible timeline. Adobe is lacking, they are clunky, their management is terrible, but Flash VM is just so much more robust at present. 10.1 fixed some serious issues that we had and it appears Adobe is starting to rear its head to attention in light of the war. – ylluminate Sep 03 '10 at 17:20
  • Good luck hope all goes well! – James Westgate Sep 05 '10 at 12:57