.Net Tips and Tricksby Peter Vogel

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Reviewer's Mandate

Here's an interesting problem for reviewing products in the .NET/Visual Studio toolspace: What are the boundaries? For instance, in our September issue we just reviewed a product that supports creating Office applications and another product for creating PDF documents. Those seemed to "obviously" be tools of value to .NET developers.

However, we just got a press release about the release of Amethyst and WebOrb which, together, are supposed to provide end-to-end Flash to .NET development within Visual Studio. Are these tools that we should be reviewing in Visual Studio Magazine?

Not only do the technologies overlap, so do the companies. Aspose, which makes the PDF product we reviewed, also makes a Flash management tool. If the vendors are mixing their technologies is the same true for developers?

Posted by Peter Vogel on 09/08/2010 at 10:01 AM


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Reader Comments:

Sat, Oct 23, 2010 Steve Belgium

We use asp.net and .net web services. Currently we are looking to use flash for using RIA. It would help to stay in the same IDE (.net)

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 Kathleen Erickson Colorado

;-)

Tue, Sep 28, 2010 Peter Vogel Canada

Ok, ok! I get the picture. We'll review the products.

Tue, Sep 28, 2010 Sunil India

As a Flex developer, till now I have a been using Flex builder and recently Flash Builder. I won't say that Flash Builder is the best IDE available. I have been working on Adobe Flex with WebORB and .NET for sometime and really like the features that WebORB provides. It would be interesting to see if the 3 of these can be integrated into one IDE. But I doubt if this product would appeal to lot of developers in the community, since as far as I know, the numbers are more in Java community who knows Flex rather than the .NET community(obviously .NET guys would adopt Silverlight more quickly than Flex). Having said that a review of the product is required.

Tue, Sep 28, 2010 Bron Davies Dallas, TX

I have been in Software for 15 years and worked with various environments - Eclipse has been by home for the past couple of years after Visual Studio because flash has such reach and Flex is a great front-end language for RIAs. Weborb makes it MUCH easier to marry the two and create super-fast apps that basically run anywhere without having to write a bunch of code in between. If amethyst helps me get back into VS full-time, I would love to use it and I'm interested in seeing a review on VSMag. IMHO - any VS add-in deserves a review but Weborb is a great product.

Mon, Sep 27, 2010 Victor M. Madrid

I'd like to see a review of Amethyst and Weborb!!. We have been using Weborb for 3 months and it is great, and we wonder if it'd be good to drop flash builder and include Amethyst in our development enviroment.

Mon, Sep 27, 2010 Dan Thomas UK

Definitely interested in your thoughts on Ameythist/Weborb. WebORB is an excellent product we have used for several years and as a team that switches between Flex Builder and VS Amethyst is an ideal solution reviewed it very early on and it wasn't production ready but definitely interested in how it performs as a main dev tool now.

Sun, Sep 26, 2010 Azmi Mansur Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Sure why not! I would love to read the review. My team is currently developing web-based engineering application integrating Flex 3, .NET 3.5 and WebORB 4. We are looking forward to reading your review. Thanks in advance!

Sat, Sep 25, 2010

Yes - please make a thorough review of both - we use weborb already, but using eclipse for Flex - would like to skip that...

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Francesco Italy

I really would like to read a Weborb review. We are deeply focused on developing applications based on the cooperation between flex and .NET platform and this framework give us interesting features and smart support to build complex applications. So i think it deserve a review.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Jason King

I’ve been a C/C++ programmer most of my career, but recently have started integrating Flash and python into my bag of tricks. For me, the Amethyst plugin is a godsend and is a plugin that I place next to Visual Assist in my “must have” for Visual Studio toolbox. I can’t stand the Flash CS4 interface for editing source code and went looking for a plugin – hoping to find one that would do at least color coding. What I found was a plugin that not only incorporates the basics, but also included a full on debugger with all the bells and whistles of the standard Visual Studio debugger. Not only that, Amethyst integrated extremely well into Visual Studio allowing standard features such as Go To Definition as well as adding Refactor commands. Outside of the color coding, the most useful feature to me has been the ability to execute one command to build all my app and all of its dependent SWFs (but only if needed), start up my app in a facebook sandbox within my chosen browser, and debug. Previously this required individual steps for building each SWF separately (having to remember what was dependent upon what changes I had made)… setup Flash to debug on the next started SWF… switch over to my browser… then find and start my facebook page. So, four time consuming steps made into one step that was far more accurate and less error prone. I mentioned the building of dependent SWFs – having the ability to set up my projects and have them build only if the pertinent AS files change should have been a basic feature of every version of Flash, but it is no where to be seen. Having to build every time I wanted to debug my app is crazy. Amethyst has added this basic feature of development and is simply another feature I can’t live without. I've been using Amethyst for about 4 months now and have to say it is very stable. I don't remember having a crash in Visual Studio (with either 2008 or 2010) in that time. I highly recommend this plugin to anyone who enjoys using the Visual Studio user interface. I also recommend it for anyone who has projects that extend past flash/flex. For example, I have my python server code in projects along side my Amethyst projects – giving me a one stop shop for building all my code as well as giving me the ability to search across both PY and AS files at the same time. Note that this plugin assumes some advance knowledge of Visual Studio to build and structure your projects and set up there dependencies just right. But once this is done, any flash programmer on your team can start using and enjoying the features that this plugin supplies. And as my final note, this plugin doesn’t require that you purchase Visual Studio to use. You can use the free Visual Studio Integrated Shell (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=40646580-97FA-4698-B65F-620D4B4B1ED7&displaylang=en) – that’s what my flash coworkers use.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Kurt G. www.ecourses.ou.edu

In order to get the most out of WebOrb, I am constantly developing server side functions (remoting, data management, rtmp), which pushes me to use VS. As an academic developer, I am constantly moving between Flex/Flash and VS, and the combination of these into a single environment, seems natural. I would definitely like a third party to investigate and review the integration. Personally, I think both VS and Flex/Flash Builder UI could be improved, and hopefully this will be the case with the integration WebOrb/Flex/VS and Amethyst.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Brian Ackermann minneapolis, mn

Absolutely. The intersection of deeply rich user interfaces, and the power of the .NET platform, is a largely untapped resource, and few have yet to discover the value of such a hybrid. Any review of key technologies in this intersect-space will be highly useful.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Greg Olympia, WA

We would definitely be interested in reading a review of WebORB's Amethyst product. We've been using Flex/Eclipse for frontend work and Visual Studio (C#) for the backend code for a few years now. The idea of doing all of our work in one development environment is attractive, especially if we could handle source control and project debugging all in one place.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Stwart Brazil

I'll assume two roles here one as a Company Owner and one as developer. As a RIA developer for 5 years i was wondering when we'd have a powerfull IDE for flex development as Visual Studio. Now speaking as a Business man i see that more tools available in Visual Studio making possible the full control of large scale project (RIA) will give us back a faster development and will reduce the TCO of the development tools. And since a tool or component is a part of Visual Studio it has to be in the Magazine www.globalinterchange.com.br large scale RIA projects for EDI and Logistics

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Winton Harrisburg, PA

Our company builds large-scale enterprise flex applications with .NET web services. I believe I can speak for the rest of my team when I say we are sick of eclipse/flash builder. While there are some features that need to be added in the way of module management for Amethyst, using Visual Studio for both ASP.NET C# and Flash/Flex ActionScript development will be a dream. As for WebORB, they are the best solution out there for use of the AMF protocol with .NET, among other things. Definitely review both Amethyst and WebORB developments!

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Kaushal Amin

I'm a big proponent of WebORB when it comes to RIA data gateway. Have been using it from last 4 years and I’ve nothing but props. I really love the code generation, ease of integration and deployment. I’ve written applications in Flex, Flash and Silverlight using WebORB for .Net/Java on back-end and it works seamlessly. WebORB is an exceptional product and should be reviewed in VS magazine.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Andrew Indianapolis, IN

I've been using WebORB with Flex and .NET for a few years now. I really love the push technology that WebORB offers in communicating to the clients. The MSMQ integration has allowed us to bulid loosely coupled solutions that are scalable and maintainable. I do wish we could developed everything with one IDE but that is more of a Visual Studio / Flash Builder issue. WebORB is an outstanding product and should be reviewed in the Visual Studio Magazine.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Evi Skitsanos Bucharest, Romnania

i think webORB is the must have thing for the moment for VS Magazine, it's not even like "would be nice if it will be reviewed", i see it as "must have" inclusion especially now in the light of new Apple's policy change related to third party developers tools. In my vision Visual Studio magazine is not only about covering 100% .NET things, there are bunch of other things that do job right. We use webORB on ASP.NET to serve clients made with JavaScript and Flex both, not everything must be so Microsoft'ish, after all even MSFT gave up on their own AJAX framework and moved on jQuery...

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Colin Shreffler Castle Rock, CO

I would really like to see a review of WebORB for .NET. There is no better solution for building high-performance Rich Internet Applications.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Robert

We do a lot of Flex front-ends with .NET services, including our main site and application configuration tool. Something like Amethyst would be great so we didn't have to switch back and forth between Eclipse (groan) and Visual Studio.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 phil Washington, DC

I am doing a lot of Flex development lately and need to use a .NET based middle tier. Working on both technologies in the same IDE would improve productivity.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 Hamid Iran

As Always be.VS is most common for having user friendly environment.I'll feel better if I could have the ability to write my flex app codes into it! but for now I'm using Ensemble-Tofino.and in some cases Flexbuilder.

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 A Robson London, UK

I would love to hear a review of Amethyst. I use VS and FlexBuilder extensively and I really feel the drop in productivity when I have to use FlexBuilder. VS is a superior IDE in terms of speed and intellisense, and to be able to do my Flex development in VS would be great. Please review it.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Lieven Cardoen Belguim

I'm wondering if Amethyst can handle all features that FlexBuilder can handle, like modules, localization, different projects that have a dependency, ... I've worked with Eclipse, VS and Intellij. VS is superior concerning usability and speed. Intellij is in between. Eclipse is a disaster concerning speed and memory. So yes, if a plugin for Visual Studio would exist that can do the things FlexBuilder can, I would definitely start using it. The one condition is that I could debug both .NET and AS3 in the same IDE.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Atlanta,ga

We use .NET, sitecore, flash, flex & weborb to create bleeding edge applications. I think you should provide a review if the tools people use with .NET and cover the cross platform and cross device technologies.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Travis S. Birmingham, AL

Absolutely you should cover products like Amethyst. Although most of the projects I work on are not flash/flex based, but for those times when I need to do some flex stuff, I would much rather use Visual Studio (Eclipse isn't bad, but not as good as VS). Also, I think products like Amethyst show off the extensibility features of Visual Studio. I don't know a whole lot about extending VS, but seeing a product like this helps me see the possibilities. Yes, I know VS was created with .NET languages in mind, but it is nice to know that VS can be used for other things when needed.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Slowly Phoenix

...Upgraded from VS2008 to VS2010. Currently struggling with the .NET 4.0 in VS2010 vs. .NET 2.0 on IIS 7 issue, so until an easy issue to this is resolved, I reserve judgement for the moment...

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Peter Lorent Amsterdam

Totally! As a developer I want to work with the best IDE around - Visual Studio Pro - and do not want to switch to another IDE when I have to do something in AS3, might it be Flash, Flex or AIR. And so I use the Amethyst plugin. On top of that WebOrb is the product to use to hook up AS3 to a .NET backend. Both products deserve a review!

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Peter Lorent Amsterdam

Totally! As a developer I want to work with the best IDE around - Visual Studio Pro - and do not want to switch to another IDE when I have to do something in AS3, might it be Flash, Flex or AIR. And so I use the Amethyst plugin. On top of that WebOrb is the product to use to hook up AS3 to a .NET backend. Both products deserve a review!

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Lukas Phoenix

I am a Flex Developer that was tasked to build a video management system in Flex that would communicate with a .NET backend. I used WebOrb and VS2008 to serve up the content and it was a breeze. Not only did I deliver an enterprise grade RIA but I fell in love with C#. I actually went and got my MCPD Enterprise based on what a great experience I had. Flex and .NET via WebOrb is a great mix. I have personally evangelized that setup to many .NET developers who want to leverage the power of .NET and the visual appeal of the Flash Platform.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 Nicholas Stein Irvine, CA

I was doing a project where I needed a slick UI. I looked at FlashBuilder because Flash runs everywhere. A part of the project was to be able to connect to my SQL Server back end. I also wanted to be able to consume Web Services or use objects written in .NET. WebOrb would have been good for that mix had I decided to go with Flash for the front end. I already license VS2010 and I did not want to spend more money for FlashBuilder when I already know VS/.Net. I got interested in Amethyst because it would allow me to dev Flash in an IDE I already know. I would like it if you reviewed this product.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 eber rojas Colombia

Hola quisiera saber que debo hacer para coloborarle en su intenres de probar soluciones Flash-VSNET pues efectivamente soy desarrollador de Adobe AS2, AS3 y de VS2008 / VS2010, SQL Server y Crystal Reports.

Thu, Sep 23, 2010 SergeMSO

Peter, it is, for example, we're developing a social app backed with .net wcf service with amf endpoint and flex-based frontend. What about Amethyst, I don't know what quality Amethyst has reached, but previous experience (as I remember, a demo version) was a nightmare: VS was constantly crashing after a minute or two of coding

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