This seems to be a very sensitive topic over the net these days. So instead of trying to tease dot net programmers ( as i have once liked dot net myself 🙂 ) or triumph flash/flex developers, i will just keep the facts in front of you and let you decide on which is what. First we get started by getting our development environments up and ready
The Installation process:
Installing Flash cs4:
I just pointed my browser to
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?promoid=EBYEX&product=flash&loc=en
you will need to have a adobe id , which is free of course. Download the file (flash cs4) , which is about 888 mb. once download is complete, double click the installer and installation begins.
Installation takes less than 30 mins on my core 2 duo machine with 1.5 gb ram. Once installation completes you can find it in your programs menu and click on the icon to launch flash cs4.
Installing Flex Builder 3:
I just pointed my browser to
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flexbuilder3
you will need to have a adobe id , which is free of course. Download the file , which is about 425 mb. once download is complete, double click the installer and installation begins.
Installation takes less than 20 mins on my core 2 duo machine with 1.5 gb ram. Once installation completes you can find it in your programs menu and click on the icon to launch flex builder.
Installing Silverlight:
I pointed my browser to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/hi-in/evalcenter/bb655861(en-us).aspx
Then i select “VS 2008 Pro trial software” , you will need to have Have an MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Passport account.
Download the file , which is about 3.30 GB. once download is complete, double click the installer and installation begins.
After perhaps 45 mins, the installation completes. then you need to download and install Visual studio service pack 1 2008 . So i pointed my browser to Download the service pack. its about 831 mb in size. After downloading i double clicked to start install. Install take about 15 -20 mins. Now I still have to make visual studio aware of the silverlight capabilities. So i point my browser to download silverlight tools for visual studio 2008 sp1. the download is about 32 mb. Install will a few minutes. then you need to download Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow Trial else you cannnot move/resize things around freely. This is about 71 mb in size. Intall takes a few more minutes. and finally we are there. you can now find visual studio 2008 in programs menu and start programming by choosing the silverlight project template in vb.net/c#.net.
Results:
Flash installation:
888 mb
Flex installation:
425 mb
Silverlight Development Environment Install:
3.3GB + 800mb + 32mb + 71mb + silverlight runtime(separate)
In the next forth coming articles we will dive deeper into the ide , the programming language, the deployment methods, and other details. 🙂
