Flex 3 (MX, halo) support in FLEX 5 and beyond

[akm <ar...@gmail.com>]

Considering the fact that spark is an efficient equivalent component set to
be used in place of halo, I was curious to know if anyone knows if FLEX 3
(mx component set, halo) will continue to be supported in FLEX 5 and beyond
(for backward compatibility)?

Although it seems like a no-brainer sticking and continuing to write new
code using mx comp set while in FLEX 5 and beyond, are there any plans to
carry this support going forward and address any fixes related to this old
component set.

This is a critical decision point for us to think about migration efforts to
the new spark component set if that is a long term vision of the SDK. 

Appreciate thoughts.



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Re: Flex 3 (MX, halo) support in FLEX 5 and beyond

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> Considering the fact that spark is an efficient equivalent component set to
> be used in place of halo, I was curious to know if anyone knows if FLEX 3
> (mx component set, halo) will continue to be supported in FLEX 5 and beyond
> (for backward compatibility)?

MX will continue to be supported.

While some people prefer the skinning of spark components the main reason for it eg support by Adode's design tools is no longer a focus by Adobe and there still a large number of applications out that that use mx components.

If you look at the bugs being fixed in JIRA you'll see that there's no focus on spark over mx and in fact a lot of MX comments have been fixed.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: Flex 3 (MX, halo) support in FLEX 5 and beyond

[Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com>]

Flex 3 and MX/Halo are, IMO, separate things.  The MX/Halo components
exist in Flex 4 as well as Flex 3.

Maintaining the MX/Halo components in Apache Flex 4.x is relatively low
cost so I can't imagine that support going away ever.  Apache Flex is not
currently creating new releases of Flex 3, mainly because there is not
enough demand for it.  I have no idea what would make us change the
version number from Apache Flex 4.x to Apache Flex 5.  I expect that we'll
be creating 4.x releases for some time.

There is a new effort in Apache Flex called FlexJS that allows you to use
MXML and ActionScript to create applications that run in HTML/JS without
Flash/AIR.  It is an entirely new component set.  It will have many of the
most popular components and property names from MX and Spark, and there
may be component sets that try to fully mimic MX and Spark components, but
the main design goal of this new component set is to allow for efficient
cross-compiling to HTML/JS and good performance afterwards.

So, depending on your customer's runtime requirements, if you can continue
to deploy Flash/AIR, you can probably stay with Apache Flex and use MX
components forever (no guarantees of course).  But if your customers are
migrating to runtime environments that do not support Flash/AIR you may
want to consider moving to FlexJS someday (it is currently only a
prototype, but alpha releases are probably due soon).

HTH,
-Alex

On 1/13/14 8:54 AM, "akm" <ar...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Considering the fact that spark is an efficient equivalent component set
>to
>be used in place of halo, I was curious to know if anyone knows if FLEX 3
>(mx component set, halo) will continue to be supported in FLEX 5 and
>beyond
>(for backward compatibility)?
>
>Although it seems like a no-brainer sticking and continuing to write new
>code using mx comp set while in FLEX 5 and beyond, are there any plans to
>carry this support going forward and address any fixes related to this old
>component set.
>
>This is a critical decision point for us to think about migration efforts
>to
>the new spark component set if that is a long term vision of the SDK.
>
>Appreciate thoughts.
>
>
>
>--
>View this message in context:
>http://apache-flex-users.2333346.n4.nabble.com/Flex-3-MX-halo-support-in-F
>LEX-5-and-beyond-tp4446.html
>Sent from the Apache Flex Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.