FXT - Flex Templating
If you get a chance checkout the FXT project:
Flex Templating provides rich client side website templating using MVC (Model-View-Controller). FXT solves a host of problems for using Flex and Flash Player for website development.
This is an implementation of client side templating using Flex. It is a very compatible and productive way to make data driven websites very quickly. The custom Yahoo Web Search mashup took less than an hour to create and the entire UI can be reskinned by changing a single SWF file.
The key point is that the Model within the HTML page drives the View of a Flex application. It allows Flex to compete in a page centric world and expands the reach of the Flex marketplace. In a typical HTML based application, data (Model) and tags (View) are merged and intertwined. With FXT, the data (Model) is separate from the templated Flex code (View) until both arrive on the end users machine. Both pieces need not arrive or update at the same time, creating a more real-time feel than most HTML applications have. This is because the data (Model) remains structured all the way to the client side where it is templated at runtime rather than being merged at the server. Using E4X, you can utilize components, data binding, and async loading to create truly immersive rich web applications. Reskinning in this paradigm is simple. If the developer changes the SWF template on the server, the entire UI will change instantly. This simplifies development and deployment of larger scale sites and allows for small teams to edit sites in an extensible and productive manner.
The solution is also 100% SEO compatible as the Model of a page is within the HTML of the application. Better still, the data can be easily parsed with any xml parser by web crawlers or other Mashup applications.
I am not quite sure if I agree with the last quote about 100% SEO compatible, the Model is defined in a script element, which I doubt google will index correctly. Google looks for information that is “presented” to the user, there is no way to ensure that the model “IS” viewed in the Flash Movie (?). This being said it seems to index our XML information fairly well - so maybe it is!
