josef.van.niekerk
josef.van.niekerk

Reputation: 12121

Alternative to Flex Framework

Is there an alternative ActionScript 3 lightweight framework out there similar to Flex, but not as huge. Flex is fairly large, and SWF's being no less than 150Kb big, I'm just thinking it must be possible to get something that have smaller SWF files as an end result.

I've come accross AS Wing, and was curious if there's more.

Thanks for the replies in advance!

Upvotes: 11

Views: 3338

Answers (9)

Kaken Bok
Kaken Bok

Reputation: 3395

Another component libary:

AS Data Provider Controls is a new set of standard UI components built with plain ActionScript. Open source.

Edit: self-plug

Upvotes: 1

Kaken Bok
Kaken Bok

Reputation: 3395

AS3Commons UI Invalidation & LifeCycle provides an entire component life cycle framework similiar to that of Flex but written in pure AS3 an hence small and independent. If you are about to create your own components you should give this library a try.

Edit: self-plug

Upvotes: 1

frank
frank

Reputation: 11

check out http://www.weaverfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=6 they claim that applications built with there framework are of the tune of 20 to 100Kb

Upvotes: 1

josef.van.niekerk
josef.van.niekerk

Reputation: 12121

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I'm busy experimenting a bit with an ActionScript 3 project in Flex Builder, and I think I might just create the components I need myself and make them modular for re-use in other projects.

That way, I can include exactly and only that what my application is using, and not worry about an additional x00000Kb of data that gets dragged along either as an RSL, or merged in my code.

Upvotes: 0

janetsmith
janetsmith

Reputation: 8732

Why don't just use Flash? You can dump your logic in AS class file. Swf from Flash can be pretty small, can down to 8kb, or even smaller.

Correct me if I am wrong, I see Flex as a Flash with XML Layout Manager (which can position components well during resizing). If you are willing to spend time on designing a Layout Manager for Flash, i think Flash is a good choice. Flash supports AS3, pureMVC.

Of course, Flex is free :)

Upvotes: 1

Florian F
Florian F

Reputation: 8875

This may be what you're looking for :

http://code.google.com/p/flit/

I haven't tested it yet so I can't really say if it's worth it or not

Upvotes: 6

P T Withington
P T Withington

Reputation: 51

http://www.openlaszlo.org/ is an open source alternative that can generate swf8, dhtml, or swf9.

Upvotes: 5

Shua
Shua

Reputation: 1315

You can change some settings when compiling to reduce the size of your .swf. Here is a blog posting showing how.: Reduce Flex 3 File Size. Basically you compile the sdk into a separate .swf that gets cached by the flash player.

Upvotes: 5

skaffman
skaffman

Reputation: 403581

The GraniteDS framework provides a clean-room re-implementation of the MXML->SWF compiler, and it may possibly give you options to generate smaller SWF files. It can also do that compilation on the fly, which is pretty cool.

Upvotes: 1

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