Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Flex vs. JSF

This article would compare Flex and JSF technologies and would describe the advantages and disadvantages of each technology.

JSF Advantages:

  • Doesn't require plug in installation on the client side
  • JSF has a standard specification and it has several implementation
  • JSF has Open Source implementations which doesn't cost money.
  • Changes in the JSP files are immediately shown on the browser, no need to restart the server.

JSF Disadvantages:

  • Very complicate to develop because the basic implementation is pretty basic and for complicated UI screens need to have additional component libraries
  • Doesn't compatible between different web browsers

Flex Advantages:

  • The UI looks much nicer then JSF UI
  • Flex looks like more simple to develop rather then JSF
  • Compatible between different web browsers
  • Flex 2 SDK and Flex Builder 2 for Education are both free

Flex Disadvantages:

  • It doesn't has standard specification
  • Adobe is the only provider of Flex
  • It requires plug in installation on the client side , however this may not be disadvantage since Adobe claims that Flash is installed on more then 99% percent of users.
  • If you build a web site which users would need to search in some search engine the search engine would not be able to understand the content of the flash files (search engines can only understand standard html files/pdf files etc')
  • Flex based pages takes a lot of time to get loading compare to JSF pages
  • Flex Builder 2 costs some money

Both JSF and Flex integrate very well with java.

In summary, if you build an simple enterprise application which requires nice UI I would recommend using Flex, if you build an complicated application which requires good performance or application which is open to all the Internet users I would recommend using JSF.





7 comments:

Unknown said...

What do you mean by "Flex Costs money, a lot of money"? The Flex SDK is free. Flex Builder is optional and very affordable, even free for students and educators. BlazeDS is also free.

-James (Adobe)

BalusC said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
BalusC said...

The mentioned JSF disadvantage is a bit nonsensical to my honest opinion. You're talking about "JSF vs Flex" throughout the article. You aren't talking about the "JSF RI vs Flex" (or "Mojarra vs Flex"). So that disadvantage really doesn't make sense to me. Besides, instead of "additional frameworks" you probably meant "additional component libraries". JSF is a framework at its own. Also complains about the UI looks doesn't make sense to me. JSF purely outputs HTML. The style/layout/positioning can easily be achieved using a shot of CSS.

blogger said...

James Ward you are right!
I wasn't aware that Flex 2 SDK is free, I fixed the post and add it in the Flex advnatages

blogger said...

balusc I totally don't agree with you. JSF spec has advantage of Flex like J2EE or JavaEE specs has an advantage over Microsoft Server which is not a standard. You can choose between different implementations the best suitable implementation for you.
Secondly Flex UI looks great because of the rich set of animations and effects which you get which are very difficult to implement in pure JS/CSS.

Anonymous said...

>Adobe is the only provider of Flex

You need multiple provider that implements a specification only when RI is crappy.
This might be true with JSF but not with Flex.

blogger said...

Funny comment

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