CF vs Flash remoting vs Flex

[SJ11]

From reading the docs on the products, it's really hard to tell what CF has and what Flex and the flash remoting server would provide over CFMX7. Does anyone have a difinitive answer on this?

[PaulH **AdobeCommunityExpert**]

SJ11 wrote:

> From reading the docs on the products, it's really hard to tell what CF has
> and what Flex and the flash remoting server would provide over CFMX7. Does
> anyone have a difinitive answer on this?

i take you to mean cf7's flashforms vs flex, otherwise you're comparing chicken
& chocolate (not what i would call definitive, but a start):

- flex 1.5 vs flex 2.01 (this means quite a bit, especially in terms of performance)
- flashform's actionscript (AS) 2.0 vs flex AS 3.0
- important keyword restrictions in flashforms vs no keyword restrictions in flex
- mxml in flex 2.01 is more expressive than flashforms
- compiled on the fly vs pre-compiled apps
- more components & more controllable components in flex
- more easily handle custom renderers in flex
- really developing apps in AS 3.0 & mxml w/flex vs hacking together
functionality in AS 2.0

and of course, there's apollo.

[SJ11]

I was talking about the flash remote server:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/products/flashremoting/[/url] Does this server actually provide
anything over CFMX7?

I've been doing CF coding for a while, but not doing the "community" thing. I
just found out yesterday (=O) that I can do flash within CF.

I just wish these tools weren't so expensive. I'd be a lot more apt to using
them if I really knew what they could do for me.

[PaulH **AdobeCommunityExpert**]

SJ11 wrote:

> I was talking about the flash remote server:
> [url]http://www.adobe.com/products/flashremoting/[/url] Does this server actually provide
> anything over CFMX7?

if you use flex or flashforms, "no" but i guess that really depends on what you
want to accomplish. w/cf7 you get painless flash remoting out of the box, free.
i don't know enough about flash to say flash remoting isn't worth it.

> I just wish these tools weren't so expensive. I'd be a lot more apt to using
> them if I really knew what they could do for me.

flex itself is free though the flex builder ("IDE" built on eclipse) costs
around $500US but i think it's worth it if you do a lot of that kind of frontend
work. if you're just getting into this sort of thing i would suggest flex
instead of "raw" flash or cf's flashforms.