Ryan Campbell Flex/Flash Developer Blog

OpenFlux Independant From Flex

Over the last month I've been working on getting OpenFlux independant from UIComponent and many of the other large Flex classes with a goal to create a much ligher framework.

OpenFlux Application (77KB)

Flex Application with OpenFlux Components (205KB)

I have two applications above that look exactly the same. The difference is one is a OpenFlux application with OpenFlux components and the other is a Flex application with OpenFlux components. Although the code is almost identical, the OpenFlux app compiles to 77kb and the Flex app compiles to 205kb. Before you think "oh great another framework" I'd like to point out the following:

1. OpenFlux components can be used with or without Flex

OpenFlux components all extend a class (currently called PhoenixComponent) that implements IUIComponent allowing them to work with or without Flex. Likewise, you can use Flex classes and projects like Degrafa and Mate with pure OpenFlux applications.

2. This is not a completely separate framework, just lighter weight implementations of Flex's interfaces

We'll continue to use the parts of Flex that work well but replace the parts can be done better. Luckily the Flex team uses interfaces well allowing us to use our own implementations for almost every piece of the framework.

3. MXML, CSS, Resource Bundles and Data Binding all still work with pure OpenFlux apps

These 4 features of Flex make our lives as developers way easier and I wouldn't have even bothered continuing getting OpenFlux independant from Flex if it ment I'd have to build all my applications in pure AS3. Utilizing these features do add size to your compiled application but I think the benefits they provide make it well worth it.

4. Flex is monolitic, OpenFlux is modular.

My opinion is if your application is loaded over the internet it should be highest priority to keep the application size small and don't include any code that you aren't utilizing. For example, the List component in this application doesn't need drag n' drop support so that code isn't included.

Even if create a basic Flex application with just a List component that application's optimized compile size is 250kb. Actually, an OpenFlux application is even smaller then a Flex application that uses Runtime Shared Libraries. I think 77kb even is too large though and it's an on going effort to continue reducing the size of OpenFlux applications.

So what's next?

Our goal is to have an OpenFlux SDK you can use with Flex Builder and an OpenFlux.org website available in time for 360|Flex Indianapolous. I have a session called "OpenFlux and Flex 4" where I will discuss the differences between the two frameworks, give examples on when to use one over the other and how you can use them both together.

Over the last month of coding/experimenting we weren't even sure if our goals were possible. Now that we've been able to accomplish mainly what we hoped for we'll be focusing on resolving issues, documentation and examples.