Stickfight

1 - Flex? Really? I'm not necessarily against Flex, but what statement from IBM gave you the idea that it is/was the RIA of choice?

2 - yup! Flex (bare in mind the post is titled "between the Lines"), evidence for this would be the 3 flex sessions at lotusphere (and the fact that the ibm's spent half of one of sessions explaining why not Silverlight or java fx), their purchase of Ilog a major player in the flex field and the fact that they are giving their new starters flex projects (again from a official presentation),

3 - About your #5 - why give Dojo lip service only if it's built into all the products and XPages? I get using jquery for some customizations but IMO web developers working with Domino should know Dojo first, and then as many other toolkits as they need to make their apps better. It's not either/or in my mind.

4 - @2 - Interesting... somehow I missed the Ilog purchase piece. Did you catch any thoughts with respect to XPages integrating with Flex out-of-the-box, similar to the Dojo and CKEditor moves?

5 - @4 no one i talked too mentioned out of the box (a shame), all examples (session or otherwise) still used the standard flex/flash object html (even the WS portal ones)

6 - @5 this one has far less concrete evidence, I am still a newbie when it comes to the JavaScript libs, but after a number of different conversation with different people (none of them with IBMers I might note), the feeling i got was that dojo was, considerd in retrospect not the best choice, and although it is the supported one (hence 'lipservice') Jquery would be the better investment for my time. :-P

7 - @6 - JQuery is considered a much easier-to-pick-up language (primarily because Dojo's documentation is notoriously horrible, though this is definitely changing.) It is also generally more terse than Dojo, and as a result of these two things adoption of JQuery has been much more rapid by the general web community.

JQuery hasn't been very forward-compatible, though, while Dojo generally has. Dojo has good foundations and design goals, but can be cumbersome to work with directly. If IBM can hide this complexity (which they've done a darn good job of with 8.5.1 and an AMAZING job with what was discussed about 8.5.2 at LS) then it's looking like a good package for XPages.

Also keep in mind that Dojo is currently the UI framework for ALL of the Lotus web-enabled products.

There are some obvious pieces for improvement, though. CKEditor, for example, blows the doors off the Dojo RT editor.

8 - At the risk of an NDA violation: I have never once heard anything about Flex on a design partner call or in a private email from IBM.

Draw your own conclusions.

9 - OK, so given some people's rarefied knowledge, which is the preferred RIA?

Comment #2 sounds like a reasonable basis for looking at Flex to me, especially given its prominence in both Websphere and Domino sessions at LS10.

(Note that we're talking about preferred libraries and frameworks, not officially-mandated ones).

10 - @7 awesome comment, wish i had met you as lotusphere to have a chat, you at ilug (if it one this year)?

8@ yup, have done

11 - Re your #2 - Never did get to show you Voyager. Notes apps natively on Blackberry (iphone & android down the line) using little more than Xpage development.

12 - @11 link please!!

13 - @11 wish I had one. Might get something on our website soon hopefully. Product still in early stages.

Trying to get a 5 min demo set up in UK office of what we have so far though, similar to what we had at LS10.

14 - @10 - Wish I was at LS. I'm in the US though, so no ILUG for me.

I'm curious - What sessions did you see Flex used in, Mark? That might explain why you saw it so much (e.g. if XPages couldn't yet connect to whatever backend piece they were wanting to show).

Unless IBM plans to buy Adobe (which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but...) then I don't see any signs of Flex being heavily involved in IBM's plans at all.

Everything I've seen from IBM seems to be screaming about XPages, XPages, more XPages, and even MORE XPages. Nathan's comment pretty much cements that.

Dojo is good tech, it's just that while everybody else looked at Dojo in the early days it was too difficult to implement so they leapt on JQuery.

Learning Dojo as a compliment to your XPages is definitely not a bad idea and there are plenty of reasons to do so, e.g.:

- you won't need to worry about 2 frameworks fighting each other

- forward compatibility

- IBM has people on staff actively contributing to the Dojo codebase, so chances are if you open a PMR with a Dojo-related-bug they might actually do something about it

- way, way way better hooks into the framework from within DDE (in 8.5.1 everything has various Dojo____ properties, for example)

- Again, it's the web UI framework for the entire Lotus portfolio. Considering what that implies (especially with Vulcan) I'm pretty sure it isn't going anywhere.

It is more library-esque than JQuery though. It's kind of like, if all you're wanting to do is tweak fields on docs, would you rather write code in @Formulas or Java? One's much easier/terser, one has far more potential inside of an Enterprise-grade IDE with IBM's backing.

15 - @14 I went to see flex in

WEB303-Using Adobe FLEX to Deliver IBM WebSphere Portal and Collaboration Services

and

WEB404-Best Practices for integrating Rich Media and Adobe Flex in Your Web Experience

but i only saw a lot of it in regards to other RIA platforms (i saw as much if not more xpages stuff, hence why xpages occupied the number 1 slot on my list)

if you dont see flex as being heavily involved in IBM's plans, and you are confining your skill set to IBMs platforms then i would advise you not to learn it, I do(enough),don't and am.

On the JS stuff, alas as a pragmatist i tend to take to not take a high minded view of it, all i want is: what i learn to not date to quickly, continue to work across as many platforms as possible and to be able to deliver on time.

If i sit down to be good at a JS framework I will regard most things IBM do to it as "quirks mode" stuff (most sensible corporates tend to prioritize stuff that will benefit them selves), I note that the dojo path is already none standard in xpages, thought i understand their are good reasons for it.

On what IBM is screaming and Nathan confirms I quite agree with you, but again it is a "between the lines" post, the official stance is always treated with a pinch of salt (I remember workplace being the official stance and being screamed from the hilltops not so long ago)

Again i must thank you for putting so much effort into your comments, it makes writing blog post worth it

16 - You're welcome! Thanks for posting your LS findings, especially your thoughts on web dev. Us N/D web developers haven't seen a lot of love in the past, but that's obviously changing rapidly.

17 - N.P.