The FINANCIAL — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) on March 22 announced the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder software, next generation Flash Platform tooling for building multi-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs).
In addition, Adobe added a new Social service to the recently introduced Adobe Flash Platform Services. The Social service streamlines integration between Web applications and 14 leading social networks using Facebook Connect, Sign-in with Twitter, MySpaceID and LinkedIn.
Flash Builder 4 accelerates rich Internet application development
Flash Builder 4 (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) is a professional-grade Eclipse based development tool for rapidly building multi-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs) and content using the open source Flex framework. Developers can build more intuitive Web applications that enable customers, partners, and employees to better understand and use data, leading to increased levels of productivity, satisfaction and effectiveness.
Flash Builder 4 accelerates development and testing of RIAs and content, providing new and improved coding and testing capabilities, while allowing designers and developers to more efficiently collaborate using new integrated workflows with Adobe Creative Suite.
Flash Builder 4 enables enhanced integration with a variety of data back ends (including PHP, ColdFusion, Java and Adobe LiveCycle) and easy introspection and consumption of REST and SOAP based services.
Open source Flex 4 enables new levels of expressiveness
The updated open source Flex 4 framework, also now available, includes a new component architecture for RIAs providing complete separation of appearance and functionality, enabling each to be changed independently without affecting the other.
The new skinning and component architecture, code-named Spark, builds on top of the existing MX architecture, providing a much more efficient mechanism for developers and designers to work together to control the appearance of their Flex applications.
Easily integrate with social networks
In collaboration with Gigya, the new Adobe Flash Platform Services Social service enables developers to rapidly integrate applications created with Flash Builder and Adobe Flash Professional with social networks.
Developers no longer need to do the work of integrating with each separate, constantly changing social network service API to provide users access to multi networks. A single Flash Platform Services layer does the heavy lifting across multiple social networks. Additionally, the Social service will monitor each social network site to ensure changes to APIs do not break applications.
Flash Platform speeds Web innovation across desktops and devices
Today’s availability of Flash Builder 4 comes in advance of the much anticipated release of Flash Player 10.1, expected in the first half of 2010.
Currently available in beta, Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2 software enable designers and developers to use the same code, assets, frameworks, tools and services to create the most expressive applications, content and video for the browser and the desktop today, as well as mobile platforms in the future.
ColdFusion Builder advances ColdFusion application development
ColdFusion Builder is a new Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) for rapidly and efficiently building ColdFusion applications and is integrated with Flash Builder 4 for fast, easy RIA development.
ColdFusion Builder provides a unified, customizable and extensible development environment to code applications, manage servers and deploy projects.
Quotes
David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Adobe Platform Business Unit
“Companies are under extraordinary pressure to keep their competitive edge. The Flash Platform helps companies deploy business-critical applications to a wide audience, while ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder truly accelerate the development process. We look forward to seeing what our talented developer community creates with these latest additions in our developer ecosystem.”
Chris Griffith, staff engineer, Qualcomm
"Adobe Flash Builder 4 and the Flex framework have become invaluable in Qualcomm's user experience efforts. With the release of Flash Builder 4, it has enabled us to build projects – from mobile to Web to the desktop – faster and in a cleaner, more concise fashion. As a result, our team can now explore new ideas without the previous overhead of recoding user interface elements."
Emmanuel Laborde, director of engineering, SAP
“When our developers work with Flex, they can take a more creative, visual approach to building applications, and it shows in quality and interactivity of the end product.”
Jaanus Kase, Master’s in human-computer interaction program, Carnegie Mellon University
“I’ve worked in other environments like HTML and JavaScript, but Adobe Flex literally takes half the time to create each iteration. With Flex, I can focus on delivering an engaging user experience, versus spending non-productive time debugging, working on speed optimizations, or worrying about browser compatibility issues.”
Jason Ervin, Flex and Flash developer, Spiceworks
“Creating the UI components with the new skinning architecture in Adobe Flash Builder is significantly faster – making my job much easier and less stressful – and lets us produce more creative, compelling interfaces.”
Ray Blaak, chief technology officer, Ensemble
“We use Flash Builder 4 daily for basic ActionScript code development. We like the improvements related to productivity, especially with regards to code navigation and the editing experience."
Andy Gutmans, chief executive officer and co-founder, Zend Technologies
"We are excited to see Adobe continue to invest in making RIA development for PHP developers faster and easier. Including the Zend framework with Flash Builder 4 makes it even easier for PHP developers to add expressive UI to enterprise Web applications."
Ariel Kelman, vice president, Force.com product marketing, salesforce.com
“Our customers have built nearly 150,000 business applications on the Force.com enterprise cloud computing platform. The new innovations in Flash Builder 4 and the Flash Platform will help customers extend and enhance their Salesforce CRM and custom Force.com apps. This new release helps salesforce.com give developers the tools and freedom they need to create compelling enterprise cloud applications that match the best user experiences of the consumer Web.”
Gadi Rozmaryn, senior Web applications developer, Hughes
“I rely on consistent, virtually perfect code to ensure that our applications run smoothly and predictably. With the ability to debug, test, and manage code, Adobe ColdFusion Builder gives us the tools we need to create outstanding code and easily track the steps we’ve taken to get there.”
James Brown, development director, Wrecking Ball Media Group
“ColdFusion Builder is fast and intuitive. With features like line-by-line debugging, code introspection, and code highlighting, we can save hours that would otherwise be spent saving files, checking them back in, and refreshing them. ColdFusion Builder is a powerful IDE that brings ColdFusion 9 even more solidly to the forefront of enterprise-level programming languages.”
David A. Yovanno, chief executive officer, Gigya
“We are pleased to partner with Adobe to provide technology for the Adobe Flash Platform Services Social Service. With the recent growth in referred traffic coming from social networks, this new service will help developers more easily create innovative applications that can reach larger audiences. Our customers experience increases in registration rates, social referred traffic and time spent by establishing and optimizing connections to the social networks.”
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