Hi Guys,

When creating a website for business applications which platform would you go with? It seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong) as if Flex is dying.. and announcements such as this just reaffirm my belief. I understand that if you are creating a mostly non-interactive website you can go with html 5 but for heavy applications like Stock Market Analsys and Property Management Flex would likely outweigh the benifits of HTML.

What are your thoughts? I'm torn because my company wants to use flex on all their application front ends and I feel like investing time into HTML 5 would be more benificial in the long run.

What are your experiences in web based application development? Where do you think my limited time should be invested?

Well it won't be until IE 12 (or the other browser equivalents) that companies decide to actually kill the plug-in forever (sad day). So I would for now go with Flex or SL but look toward converting those to HTML 5 once their libraries have matured enough to really take advantage of it.

HTML 5 is pretty capable. Almost anything you could make in flex you could make in HTML5. The advantages of HTML5 is that it integrates so well with a website design. With flex or silver light the interface is separated from the rest of the webpage whereas HTML5 will respond to changes with the page layout and changes to the css. Animation in HTML5 is a breeze.

The problem with it is browser compatibility. When developing with javascript/html you have to target multiple browsers and this many times involves specific code for each browser. In many older browsers it wont work at all.

Flex/SL make it easier to code things in. You make it once, it works everywhere. With my experience with flex, building interfaces is a pain. I don't have experience doing anything with SL.

My opinion is that HTML5 is worth learning and knowing, but right now it may not be worth doing exclusively for deployment for the following reasons.
1. The standard isn't final and won't be final for a good while.
2. HTML5 is in most new versions of browsers, but flash is still available in more browsers, and is already in the hands of more consumers.
3. Because of the time it's going to take to overcome 1 and 2, by the time they are overcome there will probably be huge improvements to HTML5 workflow solutions that will make all the hard stuff you try to do today trivial in the future.
4. Flash can be converted to HTML5 and mobile apps for iPhone(not sure if silverlight will be able to do this?)
5. Flash still supports more features today.
6. Silverlight can be designed with XAML, which will probably help you quickly convert web apps to windows and windows phone apps.
7. Looking at #3 from the opposite side, flash and silverlight have development tools that will absolutely rocket your productivity.

So. To summarize I would learn generally about html5 and mess with it, but I'd develop on either silverlight or flash for now and be ready for html5 when better tools come out, more browsers support it/more users have those browsers, and the standard is closer to being finalized.

Flex isn't going anywhere - on the desktop.laptop at least. Even on mobile, Adobe are only stopping new development, not killing the version we already have, and Flex can continue to grow.

If Flex is the right tool for your site NOW, just use it is my advice, unless you expect a lot of your target users to be on tablets. I've done a lot of work with Flex and really like it.