Alternative to Flex Framework

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+2 Q:

Alternative to Flex Framework

Is there an alternative ActionScript 3 lightweight framework out there similar to Flex, but not as huge. Flex is fairly large, and SWF's being no less than 150Kb big, I'm just thinking it must be possible to get something that have smaller SWF files as an end result.

I've come accross AS Wing, and was curious if there's more.

Thanks for the replies in advance!

+1 A:

The GraniteDS framework provides a clean-room re-implementation of the MXML->SWF compiler, and it may possibly give you options to generate smaller SWF files. It can also do that compilation on the fly, which is pretty cool.

skaffman 2009-07-08 19:19:51

+4 A:

You can change some settings when compiling to reduce the size of your .swf. Here is a blog posting showing how.: Reduce Flex 3 File Size. Basically you compile the sdk into a separate .swf that gets cached by the flash player.

Shua 2009-07-08 20:26:04

As of Flex 4 Adobe is hosting these. They are cached by the Flash Player too, so even if a user clears their cache the framework remains cached.

Joel Hooks 2009-07-09 23:33:54

+3 A:

http://www.openlaszlo.org/ is an open source alternative that can generate swf8, dhtml, or swf9.

P T Withington 2009-07-08 20:40:19

+1: I didn't think much of it until I actually tried it, but it's a great framework. Not as good as Flex yet (IMO), but if you don't need all the bloat, OpenLaszlo is definitely a great alternative.

musicfreak 2009-07-08 20:50:27

+1 A:

This may be what you're looking for :

http://code.google.com/p/flit/

I haven't tested it yet so I can't really say if it's worth it or not

PeZ 2009-07-08 22:47:06

+1 A:

Why don't just use Flash? You can dump your logic in AS class file. Swf from Flash can be pretty small, can down to 8kb, or even smaller.

Correct me if I am wrong, I see Flex as a Flash with XML Layout Manager (which can position components well during resizing). If you are willing to spend time on designing a Layout Manager for Flash, i think Flash is a good choice. Flash supports AS3, pureMVC.

Of course, Flex is free :)

janetsmith 2009-07-09 23:19:21

Flex supplies a lot more than just the visual components. The declarative layout can be a real timesaver, but there are a lot of other aspects to the Flex toolkit.You can also use the Flex SDK to compile straight AS3 without the overhead of the actual Flex Framework. Flash, as of CS4 is actually using the Flex SDK (mxmlc) to compile also. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets rebranded Flash SDK soon.

Joel Hooks 2009-07-09 23:37:38

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I'm busy experimenting a bit with an ActionScript 3 project in Flex Builder, and I think I might just create the components I need myself and make them modular for re-use in other projects.

That way, I can include exactly and only that what my application is using, and not worry about an additional x00000Kb of data that gets dragged along either as an RSL, or merged in my code.

Joe Zephyr 2009-07-12 11:21:56

Another component libary:

AS Data Provider Controls is a new set of standard UI components built with plain ActionScript. Open source.

Jens Struwe 2010-02-05 13:04:31

check out http://www.weaverfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=6 they claim that applications built with there framework are of the tune of 20 to 100Kb

frank 2010-10-28 11:22:39

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