Archive for the 'GENERAL' Category

Flash Builder 4 & Flex 4 Framework have been released

Adobe Flash Builder 4 has been released and with it the Flex 4 framework some of the features listed below:
Powerful coding tools ENHANCED
Develop using a powerful Eclipse™ based IDE that includes editors for MXML, the ActionScript® language, and CSS, as well as syntax coloring, statement completion, code collapse, interactive step-through debugging, and automatic generation of common code.
Rich visual layout ENHANCED
Visually design and preview user interface layout, appearance, and behavior using a rich library of built-in components. Extend the built-in Flex framework components or create new ones as needed. Import functional application UI created using the Adobe Flash Catalyst™ interaction design tool.
Data-centric development NEW
Introspect Java™, PHP, Adobe ColdFusion®, REST, and SOAP services to display methods and properties in the new Data/Service Explorer. Bind methods to UI components using a simple drag-and-drop approach.
Interactive data visualization ENHANCED
Create data dashboards and interactive data analysis by simply dragging and dropping a chart type and linking it to a data source using the Flex Charting library. Use the powerful Advanced Datagrid to enable users to explore complex data.
Skinning and styling ENHANCED
Customize the appearance of an application using CSS and graphical property editors. Quickly set the most commonly used properties and preview the results in Design View. Browse available themes and apply them to your project using the new Theme Browser.
Integration with Adobe Creative Suite design toolsENHANCED
Import design assets created using Adobe Flash Professional, Illustrator®, Photoshop®, or Fireworks® software, or import a complete application user interface created using Flash Catalyst. A new workflow between Flash Professional and Flash Builder facilitates importing and updating custom Flex components.
Native support for Adobe AIR
Create applications for the Adobe AIR® runtime with Flash Builder 4, including all the tools required to build, debug, package, and sign AIR applications. Adobe AIR lets you quickly develop RIAs for the desktop using the same skills and codebase you use to build RIAs for the browser.
Code refactoring ENHANCED
Quickly navigate through code or restructure it by renaming all references to a class, method, or variable. Flash Builder 4 adds move refactoring.
Powerful testing tools ENHANCED (Premium edition only)
Accelerate application performance using memory and performance profilers that monitor and analyze memory consumption and CPU cycles. Support for automated functional testing tools such as HP QuickTest Professional is also available.
Network Monitor NEW (Premium edition only)
Generate a detailed audit trail of all data passed between the local Flex application and the back end, assisting with debugging and performance tuning.
Advanced data services ENHANCED
Use open source BlazeDS to add binary, high-performance, HTTP-based data transport, or add the Adobe LiveCycle® Data Services ES2 module for real-time data push and pub/sub messaging.
Command line build NEW (Premium edition only)
Use the new command line build capability to automate your build process.
Flex unit testing integration NEW (Premium edition only)
Automate functional testing using the Flex unit testing framework.
ASDoc support NEW
Display comments in MXML and ActionScript editors using ASDoc.

More info at :

Adobe’s official Flash Builder 4 Product Page

The Official Flex Team Blog post

Adobe announces Flash Player and AIR for Android

Adobe officially announced at Mobile World Congress the Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR for Android. Kevin Hoyt recorded a video overview of some demos on the Motorola Droid. The demo shows some of the capabilities of Flash on mobile devices.  It looks  pretty good so far the way The Flash Technology is moving into other devices so far. Check the video

Pixel Bender Technology Center now live on Adobe

Pixel Bender just got it’s Technology Center at Adobe Site, with tutorials, presentations and various resources here’s an excerpt of the site:

Adobe Pixel Bender technology delivers a common image and video processing infrastructure which provides automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware. You can use the Pixel Bender kernel language to implement image processing algorithms (filters or effects) in a hardware-independent manner. The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language for combining individual pixel-processing operations (kernels) into more complex Pixel Bender filters.

The Pixel Bender Toolkit includes the Pixel Bender kernel language and graph language, the Pixel Bender Toolkit IDE (an integrated development environment for Pixel Bender), sample filters, and documentation.

For more info check: Adobe Pixel Bender Technology Center

Links for 2010-01-06

Links for 2010-01-05

  • Vote for a locally running Flash Player settings panel

    The issue reported in my last post is now fixed so well done Adobe for moving so quickly!

    There were a lot of commenters who felt that this system is fairly unwieldy and perhaps the settings should run locally. I checked out Jira and there are actually 2 feature requests there already, the first being submitted by Linda Walsh just over a year ago, but sadly with no votes!

  • After several weeks of hard work, the upcoming beta release of WorkflowLab is just around the corner. Throughout this week, I’ll be previewing a number of the new features we have added into WorkflowLab for this release, a majority of which are from people in the community that submitted ideas on the Adobe Labs forums, or through blogs and Twitter.

    The community response to WorkflowLab has been very positive, and a lot of people are very curious with what WorkflowLab has the potential to be. WorkflowLab was originally launched at Adobe MAX as an alpha release with a single intention: To help the community of designers, developers and their management teams learn about project best practices and recommended workflows.