This is not true of Flex, which is very much like creating typical web applications.
However, keep in mind that developers will still have a learning curve as they will need to get
up to speed on the UI markup language, as well as ActionScript. Third, it can be somewhat
heavyweight for users not on broadband connections, and even for those with broadband
connections it can sometimes take longer than is ideal to start up. Lastly, Flash and Flex are
owned and developed by Adobe, and the Flash runtime is not open sourced, although Flex
recently was open sourced. In my opinion, it should still be viewed as something where vendor
lock-in could become an issue, although it??™s certainly not any worse than many other
technologies we all use, and better than some.
All in all, as alternatives go, Flash, and Flex more specifically, are good things to consider
as you decide how to develop your RIAs. There are certainly pluses and minuses down each
path.
CHAPTER 1 n AN INTRODUCTION TO AJAX, RPC, AND MODERN RIAS 37
Figure 1-17. The Flex store example application
While not, strictly speaking, an ???alternative??? to Ajax, I feel that Google Web Toolkit, or
GWT, should be discussed in this section as well.
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