Ever since Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 came out the community surrounding these technologies has grown tremendously! It’s both exciting and astonishing how so many people have come together to share a common interest. You don’t have to look very far to realize just how big the community has grown. A few clicks from a search engine will lead you to an entire interconnected network of passionate and enthusiastic designers and developers that want to spread the word of Adobe Flex, Air and Flash!

What makes this community so successful?

Well, Adobe has a lot to thank their users for but it is important to note that without the absolutely fantastic efforts from the company in the development of the Flex Framework and AIR this community would not have seen such growth.

Their efforts in making a lot of what they create opensource and their thoroughness in documentation and research in “Adobe Labs” and the “Bugs Database” has really convinced people like myself to put my trust in them. The fact that employees in the company have been active in terms of blogging and giving speeches at events is another reason for their success.

Alright, so they’re all excited. And?

- the Technology kicks ass. It all boils down to that in the end. Flex allows the developer community on the web to tap into the Flash technology sector, a powerful framework and great markup language (MXML). This opens a serious movement to create Rich Internet Applications with data services and logical interfaces, it’s just insane! You’ve got all the customisability of conventional web development with all the features that flash has to offer, like rich media, animations, transitions and effects.

Not only does Flex allow so many developers to now create awesome Flash applications but they allow us to deploy our applications to the desktop through AIR instead of being limited to a browser.

Ok, thats great and stuff, but what does this really mean for everyone else?

It means a lot of things. First off this new technology breaks away from the mindset that Flash is just for pretty graphics and gears toward behaving the way web data application development should. We’re so used to the conventional limited technology of the web that when we see all these new things Adobe has to offer us for the web we cant help put stand in awe and think.. where is all this going?

It’s pretty obvious, though. We’re heading towards applications which only need to be deployed once to work on all platforms; we’re heading towards applications that are only limited to what the mind can think up; we’re heading towards a rich web where the desktop and the browser compliment each other; we’re heading towards development where scalability, extensibility and usability are common ground.

How can I be a part of this movement?

We’re in a exciting stage right now, where an emerging technology is starting to set standards, so participation by as many people as possible is important. You really only need an internet connection to witness and be part of everything. There are blogs and social networks established, which are so educational and immersive, it really feels like one big machine fueled by passion for a common interest.

It is easy to get lost in all this information so I’d suggest using an RSS reader like Google Reader, to keep up with all the blogs by subscribing to their feeds. I’m currently subscribed to 251 Flex blogs and 500+ related blogs and I only need to check it once a day for an hour or so. You can also subscribe to social networks like Twitter, Technorati, BlogCatalog and Facebook, to name but a few.

The Future

I don’t think this movement will slow down. There has been a lot of response to this technology, competition has grown and so has a global discussion.. are you part of it?

Here are some links to related websites:

- Adobe.com
- Flex.org
- InsideRIA
- RIA pedia

Blogs discussing same topic:

- Let’s Build the RIA community!

- Flex Community really taking off-