Flash Magazine published a new article by Christian Cantrell explaining in detail ten tips on how to make better Adobe Air applications, the tips explain memory and CPU issues as well as window-less applications and multi-window apps – an excellent tutorial to have bookmarked for future reference. View it at this link.

Adobe recently released in Labs the new version of the Flex framework codenamed Hero. Originally there was an intention to develop a special version of the framework dedicated to mobile devices under the codename Slider, but all the proposed features are now merged into a single framework that will make it easy to develop once and deploy the same application for different screens and devices on the desktop and mobile. You can learn more about this new update to the framework on Hero’s page on the Adobe Open Source portal and Hero’s page on Adobe Labs.

YouTube recently made a post on its official blog explaining its position on the Flash vs HTML5 issue in relation to the <video> tag. It is clear from the post that even though HTML5 allows the direct display of videos in a web page, that by itself is not enough for YouTube as HTML5 does not provide a solution for streaming video, DRM, encapsulation, fullscreen video, or camera/microphone access – all of which are currently effectively provided for through Flash. Therefore even though YouTube is supportive of web standards, but at this time Flash is the most appropriate platform for the delivery of its service.

You can read the whole post at this link.

TechCrunch reports that the Flash Player is now being bundled with all new Chrome browser installs. This comes as no surprise as Adobe’s relationship with Google has been growing stronger as they have partnered in several areas such as the Chrome OS and the development of the Flash Player 10.1 for android which was recently released as well.

You can download the latest release of Chrome from this link. Read more about Adobe and Chrome’s partnership at TechCrunch.

Adobe released today Adobe Air 2, the new version of the desktop runtime for running Flash based application on the Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. The new version introduces multi-touch support, microphone WebKit with HTML5/CSS3 support API, new WebKit with HTML5/CSS3 support, mass storage device access, and many new features. You can learn about all the new additions of Air 2 from here or download the runtime directly via this link.

The saga of the Flash iPhone compiler may be coming to a close. Upon the announcement of the new iPhone SDK which included terms banning the use of translation compilers such as the one including in the upcoming Flash CS5, the community was outraged and Adobe ended up announcing that it will stop investing in the development of the iPhone compiler, even though the new Flash CS5 will still ship with the compiler. Instead Adobe stating that it will focus its efforts for developing the Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR for the Android.

Rumors are going around the internet that Adobe might sue Apple over its new restrictive SDK license, but there are no official statements from Adobe at this time.

The new announcements for focusing on Android are not really a compensation for Flash developers who were looking forward to start making mobile applications soon, especially as the Flash Player 10.1 is still not actually publicly available even for developers. However, I believe that Android has a big opportunity for being a serious competitor to the iPhone and with the Flash Player 10.1 and AIR for Mobile devices Flash developers would have a number of options for delivering Flash content to it. Lets just hope that the new Flash Player for Android comes out soon.

The new Flash CS5 is expected to be released sometime in May.

All the hype about Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices made a lot of people forget about all the other feature phones that do not have big screens or powerful processors and which will never be capable for running the full Flash experience. For these other phones Adobe is going to release the fourth edition of Flash Lite, which for the first time will support ActionScript 3.0. There are no details about this at all on Adobe’s own website, but according to Blogger Anand Joshi, the new Flash Lite 4 is now available for phone manufacturers from Calsoft – one of Adobe’s partners.

Anand points out that Flash Player 10.1 is merely a plugin for the browser, while Flash Lite 4 is both a plug and a standalone application. The fact that it also resides outside the browser makes it possible for the phone manufacturers to add device-specific capabilities to it, while the same cannot be done for Flash Player 10.1.

You can read more about this on Anand’s blog and on Scott Janousek’s blog as well.

Adobe unveiled the new bundles of CS5 and all the major features of all its applications earlier today. The new Flash Professional CS5 will be available for sale on its own at $699 and an upgrade to it starts at $199. The new Flash Professional CS5 is one of three primary Flash platform applications, the other two are Flash Builder (formerly Flex Builder) and Flash Catalyst (a tool for adding interactivity to interfaces without any development skills).

Flash Professional CS5 has a combination of development-aspect and design-aspect updates including:

1. Enhanced ActionScript editor that supports custom class hinting and code completion.
2. New code snippets for inserting ready-made functionality without having to manually type the code.
3. New text engine that allows linking a number of textfield to a single text object so that text flows across them seamlessly.
4. New open XML format that enables you to update assets outside the project using any other application and have that asset automatically updated in the project when used.
5. New spring bones feature for creating realistic animations on the stage.
6. Enhanced video embedding tools that include a new cue point inspector.

The new CS5 will still have the infamous Flash to iPhone compiler which is technically still allowed by Apple, but would be banned once their new SDK goes out of beta. It will remain possible to create iPhone applications using Flash Professional CS5, but these applications will be rejected by Apple once submitted to the App Store. That does not mean that applications cannot be distributed through alternative stored made accessible through Jailbreak. The new Flash Professional also allows exporting Flash 10.1 and Air 2.0 movies which support many advanced capabilities such as gestures and multi-touch which can be used with new devices other than the iPhone such as Android devices and HP and Dell tablet devices.

There still isn’t an actual release date for the new CS5, but preorders can be taken now at Adobe.com.

Adobe updated its website with the details of the new CS5. The official unveiling event should start in less than 2 hours. The new CS5 will come in five different flavors, Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection. Gone are Web Standard and Production Standard, but upgrades from any standard or premium edition of CS4 will cost the same price.

Flash Professional CS5 and Flash Catalyst CS5 are both included in all the editions of CS5 other than Design Standard. The Web Premium edition includes Flash Professional CS5, Flash Catalyst CS5, and Flash Builder CS5 along with new editions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fireworks, Contribute, and Acrobat Pro. Web Premium costs $1,799 while an upgrade starts from $599. The Master Collection on the other hand costs $2,599 and an upgrade starts from $899.

You can learn more about all the new CS5 at Adobe’s website.

Apple revealed its new iPhone OS 4.0 yesterday and along with it released a new beta SDK for developers. The new SDK came with a revised license agreement that prohibits linking to “Documented APIs through an intermediary or compatibility layer” - which is the method used by Flash CS5 to compile iPhone applications.

Though CS5 end-result iPhone applications compile into the same format as those made with Apple’s own XCode, Apple doesn’t want anyone to use any third party tool to make these applications, such tools include Flash CS5 and MonoTouch. Currently, it is very easy to tell if an application was made using Flash CS5 as the .app file can be searched for strings identifying the development toolkit.

This is a critical issue for Adobe and all Flash developers who hoped that they would be able to use their existing skills to create applications for the iPhone. Apple’s decision seems more like a personal feud against Adobe which has promoted Flash CS5 capability to compile iPhone applications as the primary feature of the new release. The ban cannot have come at a worse time as Adobe plans to unveil the new CS5 in four days.

The position of Adobe regarding this new development is not clear, they have issued a statement saying that they are aware of the new license language and that they still plan to continue develop the iPhone packager for Flash CS5. Even if Adobe releases Flash CS5 with this feature, that will not change the fact that Apple can easily identify the violating applications and reject them.

In theory it might be possible to translate Flash iPhone applications into native Object-C code and therefore avoiding the violation of the license agreement, but achieving that in practice is a different story.

Adobe is still going to unveil the new Flash CS5 and the rest of the CS5 suite in four days.

You can learn more about this on Daring Fireball and TechCrunch.