Adobe falcon js

[goliatone]

Hi list,
I just read that abobe is planing to release a flex (mxml
+actionscript) compiler to html+js.

You can read about it here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/5132-adobes-falcon-js-compile-flex-code-to-html-and-javascript.html

Does anyone have heard of this?

[Frank]

Yeah, I read that in the blog post, too, and twittered about it
(http://twitter.com/#!/Jangaroo/statuses/136704629789564928).
But at the moment, I know no more than you do, and Google doesn't find
any more information, either.

[Kevin Newman]

I think they should just use Jangaroo. I don't know why they always choose the more difficult route. ;-)

They've also been working on a Flash Pro to HTML5 exporter (" with ads being a key use case."):
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2011/11/check-out-flash-pro-generating-html5.html

Kevin N.

[Frank]

Did you see that passage of http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html:

"Will Adobe provide migration tools to enable existing Flex
applications to be converted to HTML/JavaScript?

"We have undertaken some experimental work in this area, but remain
unsure as to the viability of fully translating Flex-based content to
HTML.

"The Falcon JS cross-compiler, referenced above, represents this early
work and we intend to contribute this to the open source project."

Really seems to be in an early stage, and will go Open Source.

[Michael Labriola]

It is a very early stage. I think there might be some interesting
synergy there between the two though.

On Nov 16, 7:53 pm, Frank <frank.wienb...@coremedia.com> wrote:
> Did you see that passage ofhttp://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html:

[verveguy]

Given that FalconJS is apparently now on its way to the Apache Flex team, does this open the door to really putting Jangaroo and FalconJS together? Less than the technology specifics, which of course will change over time, I'm mostly thinking that bringing all the relevant developers together on a single project would be a far more efficient concentration of effort.

[Frank]

Yes, we are open to that!
Bernd Paradies (http://blogs.adobe.com/bparadie/) and I
(http://blog.jangaroo.net/) have both openly been blogging about
how the corresponding tools cross-compile AS3 to JS.
We both learned from each other and I think there is a lot of
value in creating one best-of-breed way.

Still, Falcon JS and Jangaroo have a bit different goals.
Falcon JS wants to make your original AS3 / Flash code run
as JavaScript in the browser. Jangaroo is used to program
your JavaScript applications in AS3. The difference is that
Jangaroo applications usually reuse existing JavaScript libraries
like Ext JS, and only the application code is written in AS3.
Falcon JS applications will most likely use the Flash API,
or more precisely the re-implementation of the Flash library
for the browser / HTML5.
While technically, you could use both tools for both use
cases, Falcon JS is superior for code using the Flash API,
while Jangaroo has advantages for code using JavaScript
libraries, since it integrates more tightly with JavaScript
(for example when debugging in the browser) and offers
tools to create AS3 API wrappers for JavaScript
libraries, as well as a build process to mix and match
"native" JavaScript and JavaScript generated from
ActionScript code.
Since both use cases exist, I think the tools will
co-exists, too, at least for a couple of years.

[stevereiner]

Could see combined layer where there is overlap
1. AS3 to JavaScript compiler
2. Flash api implementation in html/js/css/svg/canvas (think it might
be more in SVG than html from the falcon video from the summit)

Extension for leveraging existing JavaScript libraries
1. tooling to generate AS3 wrapper apis (leveraging jsdoc, etc.)
2. AS3 wrapper apis for ExtJS exists, and I plan to do one for YUI.
Others could be added.
3. XML declarative layout / schemas EXML exists for ExtJS, I may do
YXML for YUI
4. tooling to go from XML to AS3

For components in the Flex framework its less clear:
1. Since Flex components render by calling the flash api, translating
them with FalconJC would result in your whole app being drawing
graphics in SVG
2. I was considering doing an emulation of flex UI controls by having
MXML/AS3 that would wrap the YUI AS3 I was going to work on (thus more
HTML/CSS). See
http://groups.google.com/group/jangaroo-users/browse_thread/thread/5241e93fb9a20bdc
3. For some apps you may want a very custom look the the drawing
graphics approach would be best. Other apps you would want CSS styling
html, and graphics for a portion (charts,graphs, diagrams, bitmaps).
4. So maybe on a component you could say skin="x" or "y" or "z" to get
either html, standard graphical, or custom graphical, etc.

Steve