Flex is the application building framework from Adobe which adds a lot of value in developing application for Rich UI and better user experience. Lets begin with Rich Internet application development.

If we look into the space of RIA frameworks different names will come into pictures – AJAX frameworks, JSF, Open Lazlo, Flex, Applets.

AJAX frameworks: AJAX frameworks are java-script based frameworks – which uses some java script functions plus some Java script libraries to develop Rich UI. People with HTML/JS skill-set can work with this easily. Cross browser support for all browsers is not present in all the libraries.

JSF: Sun has put a lot thrust behind this so that this becomes a front end framework. Its server-side – which means tag library driven and its HTML. There are frameworks like Jboss seam – which tries to put together UI framework and back-end frameworks together to provide seamless integration between layers. JSF in action: http://www.irian.at/myfaces/home.jsf

XUL – XML based UI development for Mozilla and Firefox. Do not seem fully supported by IE. IE7 has support of XAML which is Microsoft version of XUL.

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