Flex on the Desktop

This is how I want to deploy Flex apps! Imagine if Central could do what the below shows!?

I used mProjector, a 3rd party Flash Projector creator, to make the exe from the Flex swf. Only took 2 lines of ActionScript to get it to size & position correctly; no changes were needed to the Flex code to get it to act like this (although, background-alpha: 0 in your css helps, hehe!).

I so can’t wait till Zorn

*** Warning! The below uses a lot of RAM; save your work. ***
Flex on the Desktop

6 Replies to “Flex on the Desktop”

  1. Hey Jester,

    Yeah I have been playing with my flash widget (made in .net) app and loading in flex swfs as like a second desktop. Problem is memory usage I have found…:o(.

    Still having huge problems with trasperancy of flash OCX in flash though.

    Nice example…couldnt underestand why no-one has done this before. Like you I am awaiting Zorn with eager anticipation….holding off from FDT becuase of the pricetag and the fact Zorn is coming!!

    Cam

  2. Aye; 1 SWF is manageable, but many are not. It’s hard when all we have is delete, null, and faith.

    People have done it before, many many times… using Flash. Most Flex developers are Java heads frustrated with things like Taprestry, and other boring, challenging to integrate front-ends. They wouldn’t think to use it on the desktop because Flex is the solution to the web application problem.

    There is no problem to be solved on desktop other than to make good looking apps easier to make. Sparkle’s trying to do this, but we can do this already with Flex & Flash too! LOL, or in your case, with .NET, hehe!

  3. Yeah sorry cant believe no-one has done it with flex.

    Yeah I was making a windows form that acts like Konfabulator loading in both flash swfs and flex hosted (sever generated) swfs. Many widgets at once if you get my drift.

    Man you must have been saving all these posts up to publish them all in one day.

  4. I would like to know why the demo movie takes up so many resources! Is that a Macromedia Captivate movie? I hope all of those movies don’t do that. Do you know what causes that? I was thinking of getting captivate or camtasia but I’m not going to get captivate if it is that resource intensive. Thanks for any info.

  5. Two reasons’. First, it’s gigantor; it’s running at 1152 x 864 resolution. Anything above 800×600 on todays computers eats mad CPU. Quicktime/Real/WindowsMedia; they’d be just as bad at that rez with the same quality settings.

    Secondly, the video was not really compressed. You dont’ get bitrate control on the codec Captivate uses to capture fullscreen, so I think it’s a pretty high default. Running serously large frames plus at 30 frames per second is SERIOUSLY resource intensive.

    Could it be better? Sure, lower resolution, less framerate, and lower quality video.

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