About Adobe Flex and Air

[bors2009]

Hi everyone, I'm currently learning Adobe software, and I've been told to look up Adobe Flex and Air, but I don't quite understand them, even I have researched them. I could never find anything in layman's terms.

So, the three programs I am somewhat familar with are Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash. This is my understanding so far:

Dreamweaver helps edit HTML and CSS for web pages. Flash creates vector based animation and interactive movies based on Actionscript. Flash movies can be placed in html files.

With the last three sentences in mind, can someome please tell me how Flex and Air fit into this, or do they at all?

Thank you.

[misson]

AIR is a platform for rich internet applications (RIAs) -- basically, applications based on internet technologies such as html+css+js, Silverlight or (as with AIR) Flash. Flex is a framework, providing all sorts of useful classes to create RIAs, such as GUI controls and networking protocols.

Flash movies aren't placed within HTML, they're referenced from HTML files, but the rest is basically correct.

[bors2009]

Thanks for your answer, Misson. I think what is holding me back is the terminology. Please bear with me, I'm new to all of this.

First off, the terms "platform" and "framework" are kind of nebulous to me. I've read the definitions, but the concept is still eluding me. Rather than give a definition, can you give me an example of both that I would normally be using?

Like for instance, would HTML be considered a platform/framework for web pages? Or would Windows be considered a platform/framework for all the programs we run on it? Or is Flash considered a platform for fla and swf files?

I know this question is a little... unique. Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

[misson]

A platform is a real system or virtual machine that executables run on. 32-bit Windows and a PC with an Intel processor constitutes a platform, as OS X and an ARM processor make for the iPhone platform. The Java platform is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The PS3 and XBox 360 are both platforms. Flash has its own virtual machine, hence its own platform.

A framework is like a library or collection of related libraries, but with key differences; the intro to the Wikipedia article describes them best. Basically, a library provides an interface for you to use, but that's about all. A framework provides structure that you plug your code into; the word "framework" is very descriptive in this regard. .Net is also a framework, as is Cocoa. CakePHP, Django and Ruby on Rails are all web frameworks.