Using Flex2 as a free alternative to CS3?

[pwnedd]

How well-suited is flex as an alternative to CS3 for projects other than interfaces? From what I've read thus far, most of the emphasis has been own using Flex2 for designing RIA's using supplied interface components.

How about using it for other kinds of applications or animations? So far I havn't seen any reason why it could not be used for other applications.. I just havn't seen anyone talking about it really...

Any thoughts?

[dr_zeus]

The Flex framework is ideal for Rich Internet Applications. However, as you know, the free Flex SDK has a complete ActionScript compiler that doesn't require you to use any of the Flex framework niceties. There's nothing stopping you from using it to make games, or anything else that Flash CS3 can create. Obviously, all of your graphics will need to either be programmatic or imported from other sources, but that's the only major limitation of using the SDK.

[Assertnfailure]

At that point you might as well just write in plain AS3.

[sys2074]

The difference in the resulting SWF is however that it doesn't have a library like SWF's from Flash have!? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Assertnfailure]

SWFs don't really maintain a library per-se. At least not one any differently between Flex and Flash. They just hold a collection of assets and scripts. With Flash, assets are introduced via the library...with Flex, assets are introduced via embed directives.

[dr_zeus]

At that point you might as well just write in plain AS3.

That's what I meant. You can use pure AS3 with the compilers in the Flex SDK and you don't need to use anything that's "Flex" at all.

The difference in the resulting SWF is however that it doesn't have a library like SWF's from Flash have!? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

SWFs don't have libraries. FLA files have libraries. In the SWF, everything in a FLA's library gets turned into a class. That's why with AS3 you can do something like this now (where "MyLibraryItem" is something you created in the library):

var clip:MyLibraryItem = new MyLibraryItem();

As I stated in my previous post, you don't have access to the graphical drawing tools from Flash if you want to use Flex Builder and/or the Flex SDK. You'll either need to build your graphics in Flash and embed or load them into your SWF or draw everything programmatically. However, from a purely development perspective, using the MXMLC compiler to build your ActionScript projects is the ideal choice. You can automate the command line compiler through Ant or even simple batch files. For big projects, that'll provide strong advantages over trying to build your FLAs in Flash authoring.

[pwnedd]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

For the kinds of things I want to do, I think doing everything programatically should be sufficient. For the moment I will hold on to my ~$200 and keep working on learning actionscript. :)