This 17th of November adobe has made available at Adobe Labs the prerelease of  Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and the beta of  Adobe  AIR 2.0 and the attendees of Adobe Latin Flash Tour MX received these news from the hands of Lee Brimelow and Mike Chambers who showed us some of the great things to come in the new versions of these runtimes.

Adobe Flash Player version 10.1 is the first runtime release of the new Open Screen Project that will enable to have the same user experience across multiple devices be it browsers, tv, mobile phones and more. Some of the new features of the the Flash Player 10.1 are ubiquitous reach witch means that the full Flash Player will be the same on your smartphone as your browser enabling you to make your content and user experience equal across many devices. The new Global Error Handling will enable You developer to write a single handler to process all runtime errors that weren’t part of a try/catch statement. Improve application  reliability and user experience by catching and handling unexpected runtime errors and present custom error messages, what does this mean is that your user will never get that window saying there’s an error and you will not see the output panel throwing you those errors everytime you test your application. Multitouch support a Microphone class that will let you capture sound from the microphone the new Text Layout format and various other features that i’m sure that i’m missing so to The Flash Player 10.1 prerelease page at Adobe Labs and start playing with it.

Some useful links:

Release notes

What’s New in Flash Player 10.1

Download the updated global SWC to create content using the new APIs

Download the memory monitoring component to optimize your content for mobile

Watch Flash Player 10.1 video demonstrations

ActionScript 3.0 Developers Guide

ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform

Adobe AIR 2.0

Some of the features of AIR 2.0 were showed to us by Mike Chambers like the support for the detection of mass storage devices , comunication with the system and that you can now export as a native system application allowing you to use native code integration this lets you do some other things like opening default applications here’s a list of some of it’s new features.

Some useful links:

Release Notes.

Introducing Adobe AIR 2 beta

What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2.

What are You waiting for go there and start playing.

Happy Flashing

Adobe has revealed  at AdobeMax2009 that starting from Flash CS5 developers will be able to build applications for the iPhone and that those apps will be available at the Apple Store. So if you haven’t already jumped in the Objective-C  bandwagon to develop some iPhone Apps you can now write in your beloved ActionScript 3 and use all the goodies from the  iPhone like web access , multitouch, accelerometers, GPS  and compass. Besides all the well know Flash abilities. It’s important to note that althought these will run as applications Flash Player still not enabled on the iPhone so you will not have flash on Safari or other web applications. It’s a big advance but I really look forward to the day that you can browse flash sites on the iPhone like you do on a PC.

A tutorial on Adobe Developer Connection  to create applications for the Apple iPhone using the Adobe Flash Platform.

At Adobe Labs:

Demonstration Video

Watch a demonstration of applications from the Apple App Store built using Flash technology:

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year. Sign up to be notified when the beta starts.

Example Applications

At MAX 2009, Adobe showed a number of applications and games for iPhone that have been built using a prerelease version of Flash Professional CS5. These applications are available now for you to download from the Apple App Store:

Adobe has just made available Adobe Labs Ideas a place to share and discuss the new tools and features of  the Adobe technologies that are currently on development, and this will let us post our own ideas or requests  that we want to see in the final version of the products. Anyone can comment and vote on the submissions, and then they will be reviewed by Adobe Development Team.

Adobe  Labs Ideas currently  is open for Flash Catalyst. so if  You tested the beta of Catalyst, you’ll probably want to go there and submit some ideas before the final version of Flash Catalyst is released.

Just found that Adobe just launched a preview of Adobe Browser Lab  a tool for cross-browser testing of web pages and apps  as it would appear on different browsers and operating systems,and  it let’s you define browser sets for testing and set 1-up view 2-up view or onion-skin view,  check Adobe Labs for more info or visit Adobe BrowserLab

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web. Also, Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content.

Adobe Flash Builder 4  (formely  Flex Builder 4 ) and Adobe Flash Catalyst are out on Adobe Labs going to download and try them out before posting a proper review meanwhile more info on Ryan Stewart’s blog and Andrew Shorten’s Tutorial

Flash Builder 4 delivers a long list of new features, plus improvements to many existing features.There are three main themes to this release: developer productivity, designer-developer workflow, and data-centric application development. For an overview of the features included in this first public beta release, please read Tim Buntel’s What’s New in Flash Builder 4 article and watch the new feature videos. As always, the Flex 4 framework is included within Flash Builder, so please also read Matt Chotin’s What’s New in the Flex 4 SDK article.

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.

• Transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® into functional user interfaces.
• Create interactive prototypes with the ability to leverage them in the final product
• Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for distribution
• Work more efficiently with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder™ 4 to create rich Internet applications (RIAs). Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional user experience then provide the project file to developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality and integrate with servers and services.

Go get Flash Builder 4

Go get Flash Catalyst
Flash Builder 4 Standalone Installer

• Download Flash Builder 4 Installer for Windows (EXE, 285 MB)
• Download Flash Builder 4 Installer for Macintosh (DMG, 277 MB)

Flash Builder 4 Plugin for Eclipse

• Download Flash Builder 4 Plugin for Windows (EXE, 314 MB)
• Download Flash Builder 4 Plugin for Macintosh (DMG, 306 MB)

Flex Component Kit for Adobe Flash Professional CS4

• Download Flex Component Kit for Flash Professional CS4 (ZIP, 224 KB)

Flex 4 Test Automation Plug-in

• Download Flex 4 Test Automation Plug-in (ZIP, 390 KB)
• Download Flex 4 Test Automation Demonstration (ZIP, 7.2 MB)

Flash Catalyst Beta

• Download Flash Catalyst for Windows (EXE, 292 MB)
• Download Flash Catalyst for Macintosh (DMG, 335 MB)

More Adobe Resources:
Learn about Flash Builder 4

• Video: Introducing Flash Builder 4
  Discover new design-centric, data-centric, and developer productivity features in the beta.
• Tutorial: What’s New in Flash Builder 4
  Learn about the three main feature themes in this release.
• Resources: Flex for ColdFusion developers Learning Center
  Explore the new data-centric development features of Flash Builder 4 beta.

Learn about Flex 4 SDK

• Tutorial: What’s New in Flex 4 SDK
  Learn what you’ll find as you explore the Flex 4 SDK beta.
• Tutorial: Differences between Flex 3 SDK and Flex 4 SDK
  Learn about the differences in architecture, components, layouts, use of states, and effects.
• Tutorial: Effects in Adobe Flex 4 SDK ― Part 1: Basic Effects
  See the basic infrastructure of the new effects in this release.

Working with Flash Builder 4

• Video: Developer Productivity in Flash Builder 4
  Presenter: David Zuckerman; Adobe
• Video: Handling Large Recordsets in Flash Builder 4
  Presenter: Tim Buntel; Adobe
• Video: Debug and Test Code in Flash Builder 4
  Presenter: David Zuckerman; Adobe
• Video: Work with Flex 4 SDK in Flash Builder 4
  Presenter: David Zuckerman; Adobe
• Video: PHP Services in Flash Builder 4 (Part 1)
  Presenter: Tom Lane; Adobe
• Video: PHP Services in Flash Builder 4 (Part 2)
  Presenter: Tom Lane; Adobe

There is a new Technology  available at Adobe Labs Codename “Cocomo” is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Add social features to your existing Flex apps or build totally new ones, such as real-time productivity/collaboration apps, multiplayer games, and audio/video chat.

Adobe Labs has released the beta version of the Flash Player 10 codenamed Astro, the new version includes new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences.

Some of the new stuff that Astro is capable of are:
3D Effects – Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.

Custom Filters and Effects - Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe® Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.

Advanced Text Layout – A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.

Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.

Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.

The page on the Adobe Labs has links to an videos of an interactive demo of the Flash Player 10 (* You need to install it first to see this demos).
Download the Flash Player 10 Beta (Astro) here.
So what are You waiting for go there and start the testing.