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It was code named Royale, the official name: Macromedia Flex

It was code named Royale, well now it’s official, the product name is Flex [1]. A whole new DevNet section [1] is devoted to more info. Christophe Coenraets [2] is the new Technical Evangelist for Flex [1]. He has started up a new blog and has some good articles online about MXML [3], the markup language used to write applications for Flex. Macromedia also has a new WYSIWIG IDE editor in the pipeline based on Dreamweaver, code named Brady, that is specifically tailored for writing and visuallizing MXML documents.

Here are some highlighted details: Flex will run on top of: JRUN, IBM WebSphere, .BEA Weblogic, Apache Tomcat, JBOSS and in the future on top of a Microsoft .NET, (a well as all certified J2EE servers).

In a very simplified description, Flex is made up of a library of user interface components, MXML, and ActionScript. MXML is used to set up the user interface and other aspects of your application. ActionScript is used to control the logic of your application. you can even use CSS to control aspects of your layout. Similar to the way JSP’s are served, at client request time, data is married and compiled together based on your MXML and served as a .swf file. MXML can contain references to components and Actionscript 2.0 logic.

The White Papers in the Flex DevNet area contain a lot more information. There is also a Breeze presentation [4] you can check out for futher info.

Sign up for the beta now. According to the Breeze Presentation, Royale and Brady should ship in the first half of 2004, with the .NET Extended tooling to follow sometime afterwords.

I wasn’t able to make it out to MAX this week, but as much as possible, I’ll try and post up some of the cool stuff coming out of MAX. I’m still settling into my new job, and have been swamped with new projects and clients, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. 🙂

You can also get more info and postings aggreggated from around the web about MAX at Christian Cantrells MAXBloggers. [5]

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