RIA IDE - Visual Studio 2010, FlashBuilder and ExtJS Designer
- by Ronaldo Junior
I've been playing around with Flex4 - the trial version - and is really quite good in terms of layout development - since I'm starting a new RIA project and we still on the "what platform" phase I better listen what you guys have to say.
In Flashbuilder I can do the layout and mix with the back end script code really fast - the version 4 give me the power to even test the functionality of the server side script, etc and since I can use Fllashbuilder as a Eclipse plugin, I end up with only one IDE.
On the other hand, with Silverlight, it looks like if I want a "drag and drop" approach to build my interface I would need Expression Blend and Visual Studio (full or express version).
Is there a way out that? I mean, Visual Studio 2010 will come with some sort of Silverlight component palet so that you can easily drag and drop it on your interface like you would do with WPF, etc? I don't wanna use Blend - is way too much for what we need - taking the "coding XAML" by hand is out of question as well.
A third approach is to use ExtJS - they have a new designer IDE that looks promising.