Flex as an operating system

[flex capacitor <fl...@gmail.com>]

Was Flex going to be an operating system at some point? The way it's setup
allows you to load multiple applications into a system manager. Each of
those applications can be moved and sized. Pop ups appear over all of them
and they each have their own invalidation cycle. Was there ever a plan for
FlexOS?

Re: Flex as an operating system

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

The Marshall Plan still generally expects a one-to-one association of a
SystemManager with an Application.  Lots of Flex apps have a central main
Application that loads sub-Applications.  By default, the main and
sub-apps all have to be compiled with the same version of Flex otherwise
changes to API signature could cause a verify error.

The Marshall Plan provided ways for a main app and sub-apps to be built on
different versions of Flex (as long as the main app was on the newer
version than the sub-apps).

I don't recall any discussions about creating new instances of Application
and adding it to a single SystemManager.  The API allows for it, although
I'm not sure the lifecycle would.  IOW, if you do
"systemManager.addChild(new Application()), you might get an exception
from some code somewhere.

Could Flex be an operating system?  I suppose so, but it wouldn't be a
very modern one.  It would at best be more like Windows 2.  A single UI
thread, no serious multi-tasking, etc.  Flex can certainly be the "world"
that everything else appears to live in.  I think there are kiosks and
other "embedded" apps where the only thing you see on the screen is a Flex
app and you can't switch way to other things running on the underlying OS.
 I think folks call those "immersive experiences".  One person even wrote
a dashboard for a very expensive luxury yacht in Flex.  It caused serious
hand-wringing on our team as we worried there might be a GC bug that would
cause the app to die.

-Alex

On 12/8/16, 7:29 AM, "Josh Tynjala" <jo...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Some historical context for this behavior:
>
>https://sourceforge.net/adobe/flexsdk/wiki/Marshall%20Plan/
>
>- Josh
>
>On Dec 8, 2016 7:17 AM, "flex capacitor" <fl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Was Flex going to be an operating system at some point? The way it's
>>setup
>> allows you to load multiple applications into a system manager. Each of
>> those applications can be moved and sized. Pop ups appear over all of
>>them
>> and they each have their own invalidation cycle. Was there ever a plan
>>for
>> FlexOS?
>>

Re: Flex as an operating system

[Josh Tynjala <jo...@gmail.com>]

Some historical context for this behavior:

https://sourceforge.net/adobe/flexsdk/wiki/Marshall%20Plan/

- Josh

On Dec 8, 2016 7:17 AM, "flex capacitor" <fl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Was Flex going to be an operating system at some point? The way it's setup
> allows you to load multiple applications into a system manager. Each of
> those applications can be moved and sized. Pop ups appear over all of them
> and they each have their own invalidation cycle. Was there ever a plan for
> FlexOS?
>

Re: Flex as an operating system

[Clint M <cm...@gmail.com>]

RIM used it as a front end on top of QNX for the Playbook. (AIR Based)

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/blackberry-difference.html

On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 7:16 AM, flex capacitor <fl...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Was Flex going to be an operating system at some point? The way it's setup
> allows you to load multiple applications into a system manager. Each of
> those applications can be moved and sized. Pop ups appear over all of them
> and they each have their own invalidation cycle. Was there ever a plan for
> FlexOS?
>