If you have extra $379, read the 7-page Forrester report on the subject. If you don ‘t, read my blogs for free – I came to the same conclusion – go with Flex. Or, you can read this blog of Ryan Stewart who read this report.

We ‘ve been writing about this before, and you should not miss an important statement highlighted in this report – if you use AJAX most likely you ‘ll go either with a commercial or a home-grown AJAX framework. In either case you should compare not AJAX vs. Flex, but a particular AJAX framework backed by a small group of developers of the company XYZ vs. Flex backed by Adobe. This makes a difference, doesn ‘t it?

One more reminder – regardless of what AJAX framework you use, you are going to deploy JavaScript. I have a question to those who argue that today ‘s JavaScript is a good language for development of enterprise applications, “Why every vendor of AJAX framework starts their infomercials with a statement ‘With our framework you will not need to write even a line of JavaScript? ‘ ”

But AJAX deserves a credit for turning people towards RIA development. Eventually, developers will realize that it ‘s not as rosy as promised and will look for a different RIA solution. But if you are already in a RIA state of mind, you ‘ll never go back to plain HTML Web pages. Remember Hotel California? You can checkout any time you like, But you can never leave!

Now, real quick $379/7=$54.14. Both Forrester and I write the same thing, but they charge $54 per page, while I write all my blogs and articles for free. Life is not fair. Should I just change my last name to Forrester?