Flex to Sencha: The Opportunity

In my professional career I have never witnessed a disruptive shift as large as the adoption of HTML5 as an application medium. Within this movement, Sencha is focused on building enterprise-grade frameworks, tools, and services to allow developers to deliver HTML5 applications on today’s mobile and desktop browser runtimes. Today Sencha is launching a [fast-track program](http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha.html “Flex to Sencha”) for Flex Developers looking to develop HTML5 applications.

Having worked on Flex at Adobe, I have a deep respect for Flex as a technology and ecosystem. Flex is great technology but the foundational dependency on Flash Player is forcing many projects to re-architect towards HTML5. Within this disruption, I believe there is a great opportunity for Flex developers to learn a new technology, leverage existing knowledge, and deliver great application experiences with Sencha. I also believe that Flex developers have the opportunity to define and lead the movement toward HTML5 applications as they bring years of experience building world class applications with components, classes, MVC, and a futuristic version of ECMAScript.

The developer paradigms of Sencha and Flex are very similar and developers who know Flex will learn Sencha frameworks quickly and find their existing knowledge of component development instantly valuable. While the syntax and architecture are different, I keep finding patterns and concepts that match Flex perfectly but are suited to the interpreted model of web development and deployment. Within Sencha frameworks, Flex developers will find a modern class system with package support, a rich set of UI components, model classes for loading data, declarative component instantiation (xtype), and MVC integrated into the framework.


Today Sencha is launching a fast-track program for Flex Developers looking to develop HTML5 applications. We begin with a [Flex to Sencha Webinar](http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha-webinar.html “Flex to Sencha Webinar”) on Tuesday, February 14, and will continue with a [Flex to Sencha Road Show](http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha-roadshow.html “Flex to Sencha Road Show”) meeting with Flex user groups and Flex/Flash conferences throughout the year. We are also working on technology additions to Sencha frameworks including AMF and SOAP WebService support direct from JavaScript. For those that prefer visual tools, I also want to highlight the upcoming [Sencha Designer 2](https://www.sencha.com/blog/sencha-designer-2-beta-announcement/ “Sencha Designer 2”) which helps you build both desktop and mobile applications visually.

Flex to Sencha Events:

– ###[Webinar Registration](http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha-webinar.html “Flex to Sencha Webinar Registration”)

– ###[Roadshow Registration](http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha-roadshow.html “Flex to Sencha Road Show Registration”)

I look forward to highlighting Sencha’s object-oriented and component based solution to building HTML5 applications to the Flex ecosystem. Having built many applications myself with Flex, I know that you can be successful building HTML5 applications with Sencha.