Getting Started with Flex Version 1.5

Comments

bizarrojack said on Dec 21, 2004 at 2:54 PM :

From someone who is decidedly NOT "Getting Started", I must ask, could we get the installation instructions on livedocs?

The stationary documents ( http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flex/ ) are full of errors and worst of all, these documents assume that someone actually cares about J2EE for some reason other than running CFMX and Flex (is there any other reason? Other than that your other web applications run too quickly on a traditional platform . . .) I could really use some commentary from other users to fill in the cracks.

bizarrojack said on Dec 21, 2004 at 2:56 PM :

woops, wrong URL.
The install docs that are giving no assistance whatsoever are these:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flex/1_5/install.html

and the problem is that it uses a separate vocabulary from the JRUN docs which use a separate vocabulary from the Coldfusion-on-J2EE docs.

smgilson said on Jan 3, 2005 at 1:35 PM :

We can certainly look into updating the install doc for the next release and will work with the JRun and CF teams to standardize the vocabulary.

Thanks,

Stephen Gilson
Flex Doc

eddiekenny said on Jan 14, 2005 at 10:52 AM :

I am in the same boat!! i was really excited about trying out the flex trial download, but when i click on the exe file it wont extract the files ... keeps asking me for a different location!!
is there some default location that it has to be installed to????
i really want to try this out but cant even get the software to install!! talk about falling at the first hurdle!!

thnx

smgilson said on Jan 18, 2005 at 10:56 AM :

This is a question best handled by our support team. You can contact them at:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flex/

You can also contact the Flex development community using the Flex forums at:

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/index.cfm?forumid=60

Stephen Gilson
Flex Doc

No screen name said on Jan 20, 2005 at 11:00 AM :

I finally had success installing by selecting run from current location rather than downloading the install file to my hard drive.

bizarrojack said on Jan 28, 2005 at 1:08 PM :

I think the problem is that J2EE is taken for granted.

From my perspective, J2EE exists solely for the benefit of people who write software like Flex and CF, that is macromedia, not its customers, because I had no idea what it was or why I would be interested. Page 1 of the Flex installation should be the "Why J2EE?" and some sort of guide to choosing a J2EE platform. It is complex and it can't be glossed over. You simply have to explain more of the "why" so that the administrator can make the necessary decisions regarding his or her implementation.

J2EE was a hassle, and I have a feeling that I'm not out of the woods yet. I had never heard of it before getting an interest in flex, because it was sufficiently (and thankfully) /hidden/ from me during my installation of coldfusion in "server mode." . . . Now that I realize what has happened, I don't like the idea of running a service within a service, or that I have so many open ports on my server.

It took me two weeks to get various combinations of Flex and CF installed onto several different j2ee platforms, so that I could find out which ones even worked at all, by which I mean, the existing cfml must operate just like it did in CF server mode, without requiring a code audit -- for example, CGI vars must not change, such as the servers notion of its own URL, and PATH_INFO in certain pages.

For the time being, I have settled on CF installed in "server mode" along side an install of flex-via-tomcat . . . I am aware of how ridiculous that is, and we'll see how that goes before I bring this frankenstein into a production environment)

I hope that there will eventually be a set of documentation that adequately prepares (or at least warns) users of these pitfalls.

humungusFungus said on Apr 15, 2005 at 9:18 AM :

sounds like bizzarojack needs to do a quick google on J2EE. Might eliminate a lot of unnecessary thread polution.

iiPing said on Jul 16, 2005 at 7:04 AM :

This tool rocks. i don't have the gift of creating a presentable Presentation Layer, but this ease the developers, but it is sad to see that you'll have to write a lot of xml based prog. can you macromedia guys create a plugin for eclipse linux

No screen name said on Jul 25, 2005 at 4:20 AM :

我想Flex最大的问题可能就是费用问题.

Simone Baglioni said on Oct 7, 2005 at 7:29 AM :

Definitely Flex is very interesting. But for this to work, Macromedia has to speed up the .NET version of the server enviromnent ... Java seems always crappy.