Adobe Advances Flash Platform at MAX 2008
Adobe announced today at Adobe MAX 2008 further advancements to the Adobe Flash® Platform, a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers to develop Web applications, content and video that run consistently across operating systems and devices. These new innovations include technology previews of Adobe® Flash Catalyst™ and the next version of Adobe Flex® Builder™, code named Gumbo. Adobe also announced the availability of Adobe® AIR™ 1.5 and an alpha version of Adobe Flash Player 10 software for 64-bit Linux® operating systems. The Adobe Flash Platform is tightly integrated with the Adobe Creative Suite® 4 product family, the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow.
“Adobe Flash technology has empowered the developer community to revolutionize the Web and how we interact with it,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “The Adobe Flash Platform continues to evolve, providing everything companies need to rapidly design and develop compelling business-critical applications, interactive Web content and dynamic video that will reach users across the entire Web.”
Faster Time to Market through Agile Design and Development
New to the Adobe Flash Platform is Adobe Flash Catalyst (formerly code named Thermo), a professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding. Flash Catalyst enables artwork created in Adobe Creative Suite 4 to be imported with full fidelity and quickly converted into dynamic components such as buttons, scrollbars, input fields and more. Finished projects can be published directly to Flash Player or AIR. When combined with the next version of Flex Builder, Adobe Flash Catalyst enables design and development to be done in parallel. This workflow supports iterative development and delivers higher quality results with faster time to market. A preview release of Adobe Flash Catalyst will be available for MAX 2008 attendees. A public beta version is expected to be available on Adobe Labs in early 2009. For more information: www.adobe.com/go/flashcatalyst .
The Flex Builder “Gumbo” preview release, also available today for MAX 2008 attendees, expands the use of Flex to a wider audience of developers, offering new data-centric development capabilities to create rich Internet applications. Gumbo also enhances project productivity through the improved design and development workflow with Adobe Flash Catalyst and improvements to core development capabilities such as the debugger, profiler and code editor. For more information: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/
A new preview release of the open source Flex framework is also available on
Delivering Consistent Experiences across Operating Systems and Devices
Adobe also announced today the availability of Adobe® AIR™ 1.5, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, which enables Web developers to deliver rich Internet applications outside the browser. Offering new features and performance improvements to create more expressive AIR applications, Adobe AIR 1.5 incorporates the open source WebKit HTML engine and now accelerates application performance with “SquirrelFish,” the new WebKit JavaScript interpreter. Adobe AIR 1.5 also includes a new, encrypted database that meets enterprise security compliance requirements while storing data securely on customers’ computers. Additionally, AIR 1.5 includes functionality introduced in Adobe Flash Player 10, such as support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, and extensible rich text layout. Adobe AIR 1.5 is available immediately as a free download for Windows and Mac, and AIR 1.5 for Linux is expected to be available before the end of the year. For more information on Adobe AIR: www.adobe.com/products/air/
Furthering Adobe's commitment to the Linux community and as part of ensuring the cross-platform compatibility of Flash Player, a pre-release 64-bit Linux version of Adobe Flash Player 10 is now available on Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/linux64player . This offers easier, native installation on 64-bit Linux systems and removes the need for 32-bit emulation. Additionally, a preview of Adobe Flash Player 10 for smartphones is being demonstrated at MAX 2008, which will reveal the latest advancements related to the Open Screen Project. Adobe Flash Platform innovations are at the core of the Open Screen Project, which is an industry-wide initiative to deliver rich multi-screen experiences built on a consistent runtime environment for open Web browsing and standalone applications across personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. More information about the Open Screen Project is available at www.openscreenproject.org
Adobe Flash Platform Ecosystem Grows The Adobe Flash Platform consists of a large and vibrant ecosystem that continues to grow, and includes the following companies who are making announcements today:
- Acesis announced a breakthrough SaaS solution that leverages the Adobe Flash Platform to measure doctor performance and reduce medical errors. www.acesis.com/
- Cynergy announced a new media and entertainment division, Cynergy.ME, to create interactive content and rich Internet applications using the Adobe Flash Platform. www.cynergysystems.com
- Ensemble introduced a new offering called Ensemble Tofino for Visual Studio, a plug-in that enables .NET developers to create Flex front ends for their applications using Microsoft Visual Studio. www.ensemble.com
- MicroStrategy announced that its latest release of MicroStrategy 8™ software integrates and extends the Adobe Flash Platform so developers can create RIAs with embedded Business Intelligence. www.microstrategy.com
- SAP is enabling SAP developers to take advantage of Flex components to develop rich user interfaces for SAP applications (see separate Adobe press release). www.sap.com
- Zend announced the first deliverable of the Adobe and Zend partnership with Adobe’s contribution of Action Message Format (AMF) support in the new 1.7 release of Zend Framework. This new AMF component enables developers to optimize data communication between Zend Framework server-side PHP components and client-side Adobe Flex components. http://framework.zend.com
The Adobe Flash Platform is the de facto standard for delivering breakthrough applications, content and video on the Web. Adobe Flash Player is on over 98 percent of connected computers and delivers 81 percent of Web video worldwide, ensuring that content and applications are presented consistently in the format users want. For more information on the Adobe Flash Platform, please visit www.adobe.com/flashplatform .
