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

• wow-engine – Project Hosting on Google Code
  WOW-Engine is a free AS3 open source physics engine written by Seraf ( Jérôme Birembaut ) capable to handle positions in a 3D environment.
  (tags: 3d as3 flash physics actionscript3 code.google opensource library)
• ARToolKit Marker Generator Online released! « flash.tarotaro.org.blog
  ARToolKit Marker Generator Online makes you create original marker for ARToolKit.

  caution:You need a webcam to play this contents.

  caution:Flash Player 10 or later is required.

  How to use

  1. Design your original marker and print it.
  2. open ARToolKit Marker Generator Online.
  3. Set segments and marker size.
  4. Point your webcam at the printed marker.
  5. Push “Get Pattern” button when a red line encloses the marker.
  6. Preview your marker image.
  7. Push “Save” button to save your pattern file “*.pat”.

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• How to make Rectangle Marker « flash.tarotaro.org.blog
  Hi.
  I released new FLAR contents.
  This is sample of using Rectangle marker.

  I tell you how to use rectangle marker.

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• ARToolKit « Stewdio Blog
  Augmented Reality made easy

  Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. Presently, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. (More from Wikipedia…) This quick guide assumes you have a web cam, printer, and some programming experience.

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• Inside FLARManager: Getting Started | transmote speaks…
  Quickstart

  this quickstart guide requires that you have Flex Builder 3.2+ and a webcam. for information on other environments, read through the information below Quickstart.

  FLARManager is bundled with a Flex Builder project. To import the project into Flex Builder follow these steps:

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• FLARManager: Augmented Reality in Flash | transmote speaks…
  what is this?

  FLARManager is a lightweight framework that makes it easier to build FLARToolkit augmented reality applications for Flash. it is compatible with a variety of 3D engines (currently: Alternativa3D, Away3D, Papervision3D, and Sandy3D), and provides a more robust event-based system for managing marker addition, update, and removal. it supports detection and management of multiple patterns, and multiple markers of a given pattern.

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• [AS3] FLARToolKit « dkor
  The FLARToolkit actionscript library is a port of the Java/C#/Android version of the ARToolKit C library which is called NyARToolKit.
  This library dedicated to augment reality was created by Saqoosha and managed by Spark.

  Other related tools

  ARToolkit Marker Generator

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)
• FLARToolKit userz | Google Groups
  Welcome to FLARToolKit-userz group!

  If you are new to use FLARToolKit, please start from this guide.
  This is most simple project for FLAR. and easy to understand.
  Feel free to ask everyone when you get trouble.

  (tags: flartoolkit actionscript3 flash development)

• Vote for a locally running Flash Player settings panel | Seb Lee-Delisle
  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!

  (tags: flash flashplayer)
• WorkflowLab Beta Preview
  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.

  (tags: flashbuilder flash flashcatalyst air)

A little something using  the wonderful HYPE Framework by Joshua Davis and Branden Hall

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all !!!

Flash game development has been around almost as long as Flash itself I remember the first thing I did with Flash was a very short animation and the second a little spaceship game I must have that .swf laying around in a backup somewhere, I’m really glad to see Adobe’s efforts in pushing the various “sections” of Flash development inside of the devnet.

The Flash Platform Technology Center aims to reach for those developers interested in Game Development using Adobe technologies( Aka: Flash, Flex, AIR  and AS3 ) it includes several beginner-advanced tutorials and links to various resources as documentation, cookbooks an other related development centers, the only thing I wonder is why this Technology Center wasn’t opened earlier being the Flash game development community as  big as it is( Hope some of the great Open Source Game related APIs get some spotlight in this place ), anyways it’s here now so get ready to start developing your first game if you haven’t already,  here are some excerpts and links from the Adobe Flash Platform Game Technology Center:

The Adobe Flash Platform is the leading platform in the world for developing games on the web. The Flash Platform Game Technology Center is a great place to start learning how to develop your very own Flash games.

• Get started
• Samples
• Tutorials and videos
• Gaming community
  

FEATURED RESOURCES
Articles and tutorials

• Introducing the Adobe Flash Platform Game Technology Center
• An introduction to developing games on the Adobe Flash Platform
• Developing games for Nokia S60 Touch devices

Community

• Adobe AIR Marketplace
• Adobe Arcade blog
• Gaming on Adobe Groups

• Twitterformats · Home
  Twitterformats are community-driven, human-readable/writable, lightweight client-side APIs that extend Twitter to solve practical problems.

  Twitterformats add semantics to Twitter conversations and empower the community to evolve Twitter in an organic fashion.

  How it works

  Anyone can propose a new Twitterformat by sending a Proposal Ping. Twitterformat proposals are listed in the Formats section of this site.

  Community members can leave comments and rate Twitterformat proposals using a 5-star rating system.

  Twitter client developers adopt Twitterformats by implementing them in their apps. To have their efforts reflected in the Implementations section of this site, they send an Implementation Ping.

  (tags: twitter apis code library)

Adobe has updated the Flash Player version to 10.0.42.34 and AIR to 1.5.3 these runtimes are ready to go and include several bug  fixes including FP-503 ( Mousewheel on Mac OS X  wich has been needed a long time ago and forced developers to hack their way around this bug to use the mousewheel on Mac OS X).

Adobe Flash Player 10.0.42.34:

Adobe Flash Player Devnet  Overview on this security update.

Adobe AIR 1.5.3:

Highlights of some of the important changes in this release taken from the post of Adobe Air Team Blog:

• If you have deployed an existing Adobe AIR application using AIR 1.5.2 or earlier and you want to update your application to use the 1.5.3 namespace, you will need to specify the old publisher ID of your application in your descriptor. Instructions on how to find your publisher ID and specify it in your descriptor are described in the release notes.
• The process for changing certificates in an update to a deployed application has changed. Beginning with AIR 1.5.3, certificate renewals will no longer be handled automatically and you will need to use the migrate feature of ADT. Please learn more about this topic by reading the release notes.

Critical issues fixed in this release:

• When an intermediate certificate expires, it is no longer possible to sign an application with a renewed certificate (fixed by removing the publisher ID).
• The AIR application installer crashes on Linux systems using AMD Phenom processors.

Important links:

• Read the Adobe AIR 1.5.3 developer release notes
• Download the Adobe AIR 1.5.3 runtime
• Download the Adobe AIR 1.5.3 SDK

Upgrade here:

Download Adobe Flash Player 10.0.42.34

Download AdobeAIR 1.5.3

This is a short post but a helpful one in case You haven’t noticed it The ActionScript 3.0 reference for the Adobe  Flash Platform it’s out of beta and works great letting You select and filter out your results by APIs, frameworks, platform and more, and its information it’s not only of ActionScript 3.0 but also for Flex, TLF,  AIR, LiveCycle, ColdFusion and more. So if you need help in finding some information and see the inner works of those API’s be sure to check it out, it’s a must have in any Developer library.