Thoughts Wanted on Flex vs. Ruby for DC Startup Project

[Bob]

A DC Startup that has a website that is heavy on the content side
already built in Joomla is looking for either an agency or a team to
build a new website and some web apps that look more professional and
are more robust. I'm in an advisory role to the team and right now
I'm helping them to evaluate whether or not they may want to either
build in Ruby on Rails or Flex. I'd love to hear your thoughts about
this (pros and cons) and potentially be able to discuss them with you
one on one over coffe this week. Any takers?

Thanks,

Bob Neelbauer
em...@jobmatchbox.com
Twitter: Jobmatchbox

[Kelly Brown]

That is not an easy question, because there are a lot of factors you have to
consider. However, one issue off the bat is that Flex is a client
technology. Even if you decide to go with Flex, you still have to have a
back end technology to provide the data. So you could have Flex on the
front end and any number of technology on the back such as Ruby, Java, .Net,
or probably even keep your Joomla backend. The main benefit of Flex is that
provides a rich client. If you need to visual data or work with data in a
complex fashion it is great. If you want a wow factor or are dealing with
multi-media like video and audio you can do some really cool things with
Flex. If you want a really interactive site Flex is great. If you need an
informational site with some basic data entry, it's probably the wrong tool.
If you are concerned with search engine optimization it's the wrong tool,
though you could have a Flex and HTML interface if want search engine
optimization and still need the capabilities that Flex provides. Another
issue is your audience. If you're focused on the government, some agencies
don't allow to run Flash which will deny your audience access to your site.

If you can give some more information and want to discuss it offline, you
can contract me directly at kbr...@aboutweb.com.

-Kelly