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@geokenYour absolutely right: because the content of the plug-in is separate from the page content, you can safely separate the rendering of the plug-in content from the different "interpretations" the browsers make of the page content. As a developer of of content for a plug-in, this is great thing.However, this all falls down when your trying to present your content in a format that is designed to be reinterpreted for different devices. For example, the layout of a HTML page can be presented as a visual page, can be read to you via a screen reader if your have visual disabilities, it can be "felt" via a braille reader, displayed on a PDA or mobile phone screen, it can even be interpreted semantically by a search engines spider, etc; Rigidity in the presentation of content is something all web designers should be striving away from.When you look at something like Flex, what your essentially seeing is the reinvention of the web browser, albeit based on a differing, propriety format. As a web developer attempting to serve your clients content to as many user-agents as possible, flash is just as silly as serving your content entirely though an ActiveX control.

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@illegalcortexI wish during diggs comment editing window they gave you the option to just remove your comment. Unfortunately, they don't and I realized my error too late. :(

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The thing about Flex is it's easy ... and pretty.

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Great story! Despite some of the limitations discussed, Adobe Flex is great for the way it integrates with other Adobe software technologies if nothing else. Thanks!-SF<a class="user" href="http://www.wasatchsoftware.com/adobe.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.wasatchsoftware.com/adobe.htm&lt;/a&gt;

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Dekoh www.dekoh.com is the Java based RIA platform. Take a look at how Dekoh compares with Apollo on Dekoh blog <a class="user" href="http://www.dekoh.com/blog/news/entry/desktop_ria_comparison_dekoh_verses1&quot;&gt;http://www.dekoh.com/blog/news/entry/desktop_ria_comparison_dekoh_verses1&lt;/a&gt;

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@jarofclayTo be more precise, Flex 2 requires Flash Player 9, which last I saw, (Dec '06) was about 55-65% penetration.Though you are correct that the Flash plug-in in general is at 99%.<a class="user" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html&quot;&gt;http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html&lt;/a&gt;Also, one of the cool things about Flex Builder 2 is that its built on Eclipse... AND the Flex 2 SDK is free.

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Because, Silverlight is not operating system independent! (And I love Microsoft solutions). We cannot igonore MAC-OS and Linux any longer. They are here to stay also.

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I agree that Adobe Flex is easy and simple to integrate. I use a lot of Adobe platforms and find that it is a nice complementing package. The Apollo server platform is very promising, and I like how this package is rounded out. - Craig R., <a class="user" href="http://www.craigs-blog.com,&quot;&gt;http://www.craigs-blog.com,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.capatrex.com,&quot;&gt;http://www.capatrex.com,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.capatrex.net,&quot;&gt;http://www.capatrex.net,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.yournewprofile.com,&quot;&gt;http://www.yournewprofile.com,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.dietpillreviewsforyou.com,&quot;&gt;http://www.dietpillreviewsforyou.com,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.extenze-compared-to-capatrex.com,&quot;&gt;http://www.extenze-compared-to-capatrex.com,&lt;/a&gt; <a class="user" href="http://www.orexis-compared-to-capatrex.com&quot;&gt;http://www.orexis-compared-to-capatrex.com&lt;/a&gt;

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I beg to differ that ASP.NET is *absolutely beautiful to work with*. Even the 3.5 framework, which is chock-full of 1000 half-way finished *features* doesn't cut it. Couple that with the ever-more-persistent-than-ever Microsoft band of coders that still prefer doing everything the hard way and you can see why all of these counter-platforms are springing up in droves to counter the .NET giant. For anyone out there who can tell red from magenta (MS developers only see in black, white, red and blue -- but they have IntelliSense) Visual Studio is a joke of an *editor* to work in. I beg any seasoned developer out here to counter the claim that the AJAX and the ScriptManager is at best fluky and unpredictable. For those of us that don't have time to code every page in Notepad and perfectly indent our lines with space-bar precision, .NET's lack of support for designers in Design view is disgusting. If I had a dollar for every time I changed to design view, got thrown 3000 errors -- did nothing to the code -- closed and reopened the page and all errors were gone (due to the ScriptManager blowing something up), I would be a rich man. If Microsoft wanted to make web development easier and available to the masses, they would have made it friendlier, and in typical Microsoft style, have further pushed .NET to the pocket-protector elitists (who still think picture identity badges on lanyards are cool status symbols) with on-top-of-each-other terminologies and acronyms. C'mon... So (this week) the DataView or DataSet that binds the DataSource to the DataList? Having discovered the limitations of the DataList, the Sheeple are now (this week) using the GridView which sucks slightly-less or equally (if you write 30 different event handlers in C# with a modest 200 lines of code each), or you can just suck it up and pay Telerik the $999.99 for a GridView that actually does what ye standard eCommerce GridView needs to do off the shelf. And for the love of God -- can we pick a standard and stick with it for more than a week for very common things like (call me crazy) sending SMTP mail from a web application. Last week the Sheeple were all using System.Web.Mail >> poof -- overnight -- deprecated -- the Sheeple have decided to use System.Net.Mail ...

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