Ajax vs Flex vs Silverlight vs Other

HTML 5 has been causing a real stir in the RIA community recently. There has been a rise in "Flash Killer" articles and blog posts. I guess everybody has a right to their own opinion. The problem I have with nearly all of these stories is what they choose to compare. You can't just compare Flex to Silverlight for example because they're composite platforms. A more accurate comparison would be Flash Player vs Silverlight Runtime. Nearly every Flex vs Silverlight article I've read treats Flash and Flex as one entity and it's not. Here is a list of what I believe to be valid comparisons.

Flash Player vs Sliverlight Runtime
Flex SDK vs Silverlight SDK
Flash + Ajax vs Flash + Flex SDK

One comparison I would like to see more of is the Flash + Ajax vs Flash + Flex SDK. How does Ajax compare to Flex when you allow the use of Flash to fill the gaps in Ajax. When working with Ajax applications there is nothing wrong with using Flash just were you need it. I have recently discovered Ext JS and so far my experience has been alot better but only time will tell. I'm about to port a large Flex application to Ext JS :)

Flash Pivot Table Component

I've been searching for a Flex based Pivot Table component. I found one offered by FlexMonster. It looks really cool and is able to handle large datasets. There is only one small problem. I can't download an evaluation and nobody is responding to my email. If anybody knows of a better way to get a hold of the guys at FlexMonster. Let me know :)

RadTools

I have launched a google code project called RadTools. It's a place where I can post my collection of useful tools I use to make my application development a little faster and easier. My first tool is a PureMVC template for Flash Develop 3. I've had these project and file templates on my PC for months. Now I am able to give them an official home where they can be maintained. I have a WebOrb .NET project template for Flash Develop as well but its not quite ready but as soon as its done I will create a zip file for it.

It's my Birthday

Today it's my birthday. I am 30 yrs old. Let see what the next 3o yrs will bring :)

Flex on TopCoder

TopCoder is now offering Flex/Actionscript 3 competitions. In the past TopCoder has only offered Java and .NET competitions. This is a great opportunity for the Flex community to test their skills and earn a little cash. Let the games begin :)

Actionscript 3 HMAC: Keyed-Hashing

I have implemented the HMAC (RFC2104) in actionscript 3 using the as3 core library. I have submitted a patch to as3 core lib. I developed the HMAC library because I needed it to perform the CRAM-MD5 for my actionscript 3 mail api project AsMailer. The HMAC library has been tested for MD5 and SHA1. The library can support other hash methods but they have not been tested.

asDox Alpha 2.1 Released

I have updated the asDox project and release 1.0.0 alpha 2.1 which contains some minor bugs fixes with imports and file encoding. I like to thank Eamonn Faherty for reporting these issues. I have not had a lot of time to work on asDox but that is all about to change. I am working on a new Flex + WebOrb + Doctrine project in which I am using asDox to generate the Doctrine Records, PHP DTO's, and the PHP DAO's. I will try to blog my progress for those who are interested.