Gumbo is the code name of the next version of Adobe Flex and new information about it has been made available on the Gumbo Page of the Flex Open Source site.
Some of the highlights on the next version of Flex include the following:
Themes of the Release
Design in mind
A framework for continuous and easier collaboration between designer and developer.
Developer Productivity
Improve compiler perfomance and add productivity enhancements.
Framework evolution.
Take advantage of the new Flash Player capabilities and add features required by common use-cases.
Ely Greenfield gives us a demo on designer and developer workflow.
And Matt Chotin provides a recorded preso outlining the plans for the next version of the Flex SDK (Gumbo).
Some of the things that Matt says on his preso are quite promising a new namespace added (MXML 2009) to the MXML language to support more toolability and make it easier to describe experience-oriented features such as states and transitions.
A new format that promotes the features available in the Flash Player and is usable by tools to describe various graphic assets, including skins (FXG) this format is already in use by the Fireworks CS4 Beta.
Component and skinning architecture for easy tool participation.
Improved existing experience-oriented features such as states, effects, and layout.
A final release it’s aimed to the second half of 2009.
Bidirectional layouts (mirroring) and text support.
New Video component.
And he also mentions that a new initiative is forming to build a ground-up lightweight/scalable framework for developing at other devices such as mobile phones but it’s a long term aimed to be released at the first half of 2010.
Here’s the link to Mike’s preso
Here’s a link to Gumbo’s White Paper: An Introduction to the Gumbo Component Architecture
Keep an eye on Gumbo’s Downloads page on Adobe’s Open Source site for releases of Gumbos Milestones.
