Monday, March 26, 2012

Probably a stupid question........Flash>Atlas ?

This is probably a dumb question but....anyway.....
Hasn't this kind of 'client side processing to provide a richer user experience without postbacks' already been implemented a billion times better by Macromedia Flash ? What are the benefits of atlas over flash ( please don't say 'you need a plug-in for flash' as the flash player is pretty much ubiquitous now )?
Or is it just utterly stupid to try and compare them both?
How is Atlas related to AJAX?

There are no dumb questions.Smile [:)]
Here are my answers as oppossed to anyone else's:
Atlas is Microsoft's implementation of Ajax for the .NET platform.
I see Flash and Atlas as different products. Flash started as graphical animation over the web. It is trying to grow to provide a programmable interface, however, the languages semantics of Flash are problematic according to a developer friend of mine. His company tried to create a complete web ui using flash and they gave up based on a number of technical issues, including the fact that there was little documentation regarding how to create an application, limited support for most programming items (try-catch being one), and a few other things that escape my mind at this moment. I believe that there is a Flash Server that provides a lot of this functionality, but I don't know anything about it. I don't remember all of the issues that he brought up, but there were several. I have not used flash so my data may be completely inaccurate. Smile [:)] Also, don't dismiss the plug-in issue. The plug-in issue is a much bigger deal than just downloading and installing it. Many companies don't allow for third-party plugins. Getting a plug-in installed can be a major headache. Atlas does not require an installation at the client. Atlas only requires an installation of the application at the server. According to the Scott Guthrie blog entry, Atlas will run without installing anything on the web server. Atlas requires a dll in the /bin directory of an application and some script files that are a part of an application, not the web server.
I see flash as primarily used for its graphical featureset. I see Atlas and Ajax as being used for application development where data is primarily text. Yes, the Web2.0/mashup metaphor is bring together both worlds, but most application oriented data is still textual.
Anyway, thats my thoughts on the issue.


Flash has grown quite a bit and now offers very powerful programming elements. It can easily support asynchronous method invocations, serialization os complex types, data binding, and event persistent connections to the backend to avoid polling schemes - something that javascript does not support today.
Our product supports both Flash and AJAX clients in the same capacity. You can see the same examples implemented with Flash or AJAX and using the same server and the server-side .NET classes.:http://www.themidnightcoders.com/examples.
cheers,
Terry

Yes, it has been several years since they tried to do the flash ui. I figured my data was old. Smile [:)]



I think another big advantage that a pure JavaScript solution offers is that there is no need for a Flash programmer; literally the skillset. Typically, most people I have had the pleasure of working with, most can do even the most basic JavaScript, where only a very very small few can do any sort of Flash.
Cost. With Flash, not only do you need the investment into the additional skillset you need the tools/IDE.

There's a topic on the docs page that gives an overview of the relationship between Atlas and AJAX, it's titled "Understanding AJAX Applications and ASP.NET Atlas". It's athttp://atlas.asp.net/docs.

Thanks for the posts chaps, much appreciated.
>I think another big advantage that a pure JavaScript solution offers is that there is no need for a Flash programmer; literally the skillset. >Typically, most people I have had the pleasure of working with, most can do even the most basic JavaScript, where only a very very >small few can do any sort of Flash.
The thing is though, AFAIK actionscript IS javascript! I did a bit of actionscript maybe 3 4 years ago, and the 2 languages are VERY similar. I remember reading that this was intentional by Macromedia to allow easy learning for the javascript mob.
Still not seen a really convincing argument for atlas>flash though.
Thanks for the cool little discussion and the links everyone.

My 2 cents...
One of the cool things about Atlas is that it can enhance legacy ASP.NET sites (or generically, any HTML web app) incrementally. That is, you can take an existing web app and start enriching it with Atlas immediately and in small doses. You don't need to rebuild the whole web app from scratch. You can "layer in" Atlas functionality to give your existing web app incrementally richer behavior.
Further, if you use the client-side Atlas tags/functions, you can retain a nice separation of presentation and behavior for your web app. Your presentation can be built using vanilla HTML. It's behavior (how it reacts to events like "click" or "hover") can be built with Atlas tags. Thus, Atlas can help designers and developers collaborate. The designer can write the presentation (HTML) and the developer can write the behavior (Atlas tags and functions).
In Flash apps (not merely Flash eye-candy animations), in practice, the whole app is recreated from scratch. Though there are examples of hybrid HTML/Flash apps, these seem less common than Flash apps that are self-contained. Thus they tend to demand a full rewrite of your legacy app. Or, for new web apps, they tend to demand a singular approach rather than facilitating hybrid technologies that marry the best of HTML with the best of behavioral technology like Javascript.
-Russ-

Hi,

Thought i'd jump on the wagon and put in my 2 cents, so here it is.

I'm not really sure this magical world with designers doing the HTML really exists, in my experience it's been the designer doing mockups and developers doing the rest far too. At best the designer might provide the HTML for the master layout.

On the ATLAS vs Flash point, they are really 2 different fish IMO. I havn't seen too many true web applications using Flash. Also, i don't think search engines are particularly fond of flash, although i don't think they will work particularly well with ATLAS either.

Nick

No comments:

Post a Comment