As the Adobe and Flash communities probably already know, Adobe's Flex platform was released recently. For the unfamiliar, Flex is a development environment that allows developers to build web applications replete with business rules, layout capabilities and other goodies that compile to Flash. The result can be a really compelling, rich end-user experience. We all know that AJAX gets all the buzz these days. We do plenty of AJAX work here at Arc90. But we’re also loving Flex 2. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. No More Browser Compliance Testing! One thing about AJAX, it’s more complicated than plain ol’ XHTML and some CSS. Browser compatibility testing goes from a bad dream to a nightmare. Since Flex apps compile to Flash SWF files, they are identical down to the pixel, no matter which browser or operating system you’re using.
2. E4X. Anyone who’s parsed XML knows the pain of parsers. Flex 2’s version of Actionscript includes Ecmascript for XML or E4X. It makes walking an XML object way easier by treating XML as a primitive. Take a look at these simple examples. Sweet.
3. No More Interface Layout Pain. We’ve all been there. Anyone who’s committed to CSS for layout knows the pain in attempting to properly lay out those DIV tags. It’s painful. With the Flex markup language’s (MXML) container-based, it’s far simpler to lay out both fixed and liquid designs to predictable results.
4. Simple Field Validation. Anyone’s who’s built business or eCommerce applications has dealt with form field validation. Zip codes. Credit card numbers. They’re all built right in and very easy to use.
5. Rich Media Support. The Flash platform has absolutely blind-sided the previously dominant media players on the Web (Real, Windows Media). It is light and works without installing this or that. Flex makes it simple to embed both audio and video content right into your applications.

Source : http://blog.arc90.com