Websites are fast becoming a haven of media-rich content. Long gone are the days of plain and basic text, with information now being delivered using video, audio and animation.
Adobe’s Flex framework is fast becoming the “daddy” of media-rich website design. The ability to create beautiful-looking websites with Flash-style interactivity is hard to ignore. It’s a true “mash up” with the ability use HTML, CSS, ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP and ASP, to name but a few supported scripting technologies.
Some great examples of websites created in Flex include Grooveshark, the FWA Theatre and Volkswagen UK. These types of site are where I believe the internet is really going, featuring interfaces that allow you to interact by “dragging and dropping”, enabling “on-the-fly” data importing. “Intelligent” and user-driven, these interfaces are capable of reacting having determined who you are and what you are looking for.
Web applications that are developed using Flex also have the ability to run on desktops via the Adobe AIR platform, placing themselves on users’ front doors, with such flexibility and unique features that it’s easy to see the benefits Flex has to offer to even the most basic of websites.
If I were a betting my man I would put my money on this hound, as I think Flex is going to run and run.
By Neil Berrow
For more information visit: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
Tags: Flex, media rich