Flex is “Flash for programmers.” Previously, to create a Flash application, one had to utilize the timeline-based, GUI Flash authoring tool published by Adobe. While later versions of Flash allowed some pretty heavy programming through ActionScript, it was tedious and/or annoying to program through what was essentially a visual editor. Also, the program cost $900.

Flex is free from Adobe; they sell an IDE which supposedly makes things easier… it seems you can do drag ‘n drop application layouts with it, reminicent of Visual Basic. Anyway, I digress. A Flex application is made up of MXML (an XML-derivative used for layout) and ActionScript 3 (for logic). A very valid comparison would be to compare Flex to HTML (presentation) and PHP/ASP (logic).

I downloaded the SDK (read the release notes… no real “installation” per se, but you have to uninstall/reinstall your Flash player), and ran through the first two parts of this orientation. It starts you out with a basic application, then goes into tying Flex into other dynamic web languages such as PHP. Definitely web-centric for right now; I’m interested in looking into more graphical, ActionScript-centric tutorials.