Earlier this month Adobe release the public beta of its upcoming AIR 2.0 SDK – codenamed Athena. The latest version of the SDK will enable you to create AIR applications with new features such as the support for mass storage devices, advanced networking capabilities, multi-touch gestures, HTML5 & CSS3 support, and many other new features. You can learn more about Athena and download the SDK at Adobe Labs.

Adobe recently released version 3.5 of the Flex SDK, the freely available SDK for developing and deploying Flex applications. This is a minor update that fixes bugs and security issues, but it is still worth checking out by Flex developers. You can download the new SDK from Adobe’s website.

Adobe announced recently that has canceled its plans to release a public beta of Flash CS5 before the end of this year in hope of delivering a more fine tuned final product sometime next year. I am like the majority of other Flash users disappointed as I was looking forward to try out the new features of Flash CS5, especially the tools for creating Flash iPhone applications using the IDE. It is unknown if there would be a public beta release of Flash CS5 now before its official release in 2010.

On a more positive note, Lee Brimelow posted a video showing some of the new features of Flash CS5 including on-stage video playback and cue point creation tools, new Flash file open uncompressed format, code snippets, custom class code hints, Flash Builder integration, and the new TLF text format. You can view the video at GotoAndLearn.com.

Flash CS5 is expected to be released in the first half of 2010.

Adobe recently announced a new set of services to support developers of the Flash Platform and help them distribute and monetize any Flash widgets and applications.

Using the new distribution service, developers of Flash widgets can use Adobe technologies to make it easy to share these widgets online across popular social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Widgets could also be used to link to alternative editions of the widgets like a Flash Lite version, an Adobe AIR version, or an iPhone app version of the widget.

The whole system would be managed through Gigya that offers an online portal that will allow users to track the number of downloads and performance of the widget. Gigya also offers a number of paid distribution methods which developers can use to promote their widgets and applications on the web.

The services will also include in the future a number of features for helping developers easily integrate social features from Facebook and MySpace in their actual widgets.

You can learn more about Flash Platform Services from Adobe’s website.

[via TechCrunch]

Adobe Labs released yesterday a beta AS3 Class called Squiggly that operates as a spell check engine for Flash Player 10 movies and Adobe AIR projects. The spell-check engine will underline wrongly spelled words and will show suggested corrections in the right-click context menu.

Squiggly could be used in with Flash Professional or Flash Builder, but currently the class relies on Flex UI components to underline the text, however, developers may write their own UI interface to be able to use Squiggly without relying on any Flex component. You can learn more about Squiggly and download it for free from this link.

Flash Magazine is reporting that Adobe showed a sneak peak of the upcoming version of Flash CS codenamed “Viper” Flash Professional CS5  at the Flash on the Beach conference. Features of this new release include:

• Integration of Flash Builder (i.e. Flex Builder) – Viper will be able to directly open and export Flash Builder.
• Simplified coding methods including ready-made code snippets for quickly adding functionality to Flash projects. For example, it will be possible to drag and drop a code snippet to program an object to move around the stage using the keyboard arrows.
• The ActionScript editor will show auto-completion hints for custom classes.
• Text Layout Framework will be supported through the Text Panel.
• The Deco-Brush will be improved.

You read more about these new features and check screen shots of these new features at the Flash Magazine.

You can down a 180Mb video of the session via this link – courtesy of Jon MacDonald.

People running Mac should think before upgrading to the next version of the Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, which is going to be released tomorrow. Adobe has confirmed that Adobe CS4 is fully compatible with this new OS and that it will run smoothly on it, however, Adobe has not run a compatibility test for the previous version CS3 and will not be supporting any bugs which could be appear on this OS. That is not to say that CS3 will not run on Snow Leopard, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t. People still running Adobe CS3 should wait and hear other people’s feedback before making the jump. Others on CS4 have nothing to worry about.

Adobe recently released a new product in Labs called Adobe Wave, which is basically a service tied to an AIR application to send updates directly to the desktop of end users. It serves the same function as a desktop based RSS reader, but is proprietary, does not read regular RSS feeds, and has no web based access for users to check the latest updates. The service will probably not have any wide spread due to the effort necessary for publishers to set up their feeds and integrate the Wave API into existing feeds.

Anyway, Flash developers should still check it out because it is a great example of a light-weight AIR application that has a nice simple interface and great web connectivity.

You can learn more about Adobe Wave at Adobe Labs.

Google announced yesterday it’s intention to release an operating system focused around its browser Chrome and web technologies. The Chrome OS will be built on top of the Linux kernel and will be targeted at netbooks. The OS will enable native use of web applications and will enable developers to create applications for the OS using web technologies. Google announced that the OS will be available to consumers in the second half of 2010.

The Google Chrome OS will probably not be for everyone as it will focus on web based applications which have yet not reached the stage at which they can replace specialist applications such as Photoshop CS4 or Flash CS4. It will be very unlikely for these applications to be ported to this OS, however the OS is clearly targeted at the mass consumer market through netbooks and not professional users.

In terms of project deployment, Flash developers should not worry about having their web based projects run on Chrome OS as the Chrome browser supports Flash, but the same could not be said about Adobe AIR projects which require the installation of the AIR runtime at the OS level. However, AIR is currently available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As Chrome OS will open source and based on Linux, it is very likely for Adobe to release AIR for the Chrome OS as Adobe has supported other similar Google projects (i.e. Android).

You can learn more about the Chrome OS by checking the announcement at the Google Blog and TechCrunch.

 Electric Rain released today the new version of Swift3D, the 3D modeling and animation tool of choice for Flash designers. The new Swif3d v6 features new boolean operations for merging and punching objects out of each other, enhanced speed and performance, support for Papervision3D 2.0 to create real time 3D Flash graphics, and other new features.

I was personally not impressed at all with the implementation of Papervision3D in the previous version of Swif3D, so I hope the implementation of Papervision3D 2.0 is better.

v6 is instantly available for purchase for both the Mac and Windows at the price of $250. Trial versions are not out yet. You can learn more about Swift3D from the official website of Electric Rain.