One complaint I have with Flex apps is that even with a minor increase in GUI complexity, it begins to lag like crazy. This is especially true with tables; scrolling through them is a pain. Btw, I experience this on a p4 3ghz 1gb ram running Flash 9 in both Linux and Windows. In comparison, most of the Ajax apps I use feel fairly smooth, but I guess from a developer's point of view, it's a compromise in maintainability.
Yes I agree, scrolling through TileList in Flex is really slow and chunky too. Although, there are some workarounds you can code to make the interaction with them feel smoother. Ya, for developers, maintaining Flex apps is really easy because everything visual is a mxml component and can be abstracted from the rest of the code. It's easier to maintain and debug, at least compared to plain actionscript or javascript.
I am currently building my web application using Flex2 and I plan to port it for the apollo platform as soon as it is released. Is there other big advantages other than the online/offline mode, local file system access, clipboard support? And they still didnt announce the release date? I guess the correct support for AJAX in their runtime renderer is holding them back..
Are there other people that are developping using Flex around here? I know that the developer networks/resources for Flex as yet to take off. Mainly because it's free only since July 06.
The release date is set to mid 2007 from what I can gather. June/July is probably when I'd expect it to hit the public. I don't really develop with Flex since I stick to web based apps. I also have few misgivings about installing Apollo and letting it mess around with my filesystem. They better have a robust security layer or else developers will shy away from it.
Apollo has always been a curiosity for me. The things I'm seeing looks very cool but I also wonder about the psychological acceptability (ease of integration). The runtime is a small download, but it's still another runtime outside of the browser.
The potential of developing Flex applications, among others, in this type of environment is attractive, and I truly want to be convinced. But I need to see more before that happens.
