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.

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.

Flash has been receiving a lot of negative criticism lately in light of the release of Apple’s iPad and the increasing popularity of the video features of HTML5, but in opposition of this, Google recently announced that it is collaborating with Adobe to provide better integration between Google Chrome browser and the Flash Player as the latest version of the plugin will come from now on bundled with the Chrome and updates of the plugin will be pushed through the browser’s own auto-update feature. The usability of the Flash Player will also be improved as pages containing Flash movies will now be included in Chrome’s “sandbox”.

According to TechCrunch, these benefits will also extend to the upcoming Google Chrome OS.

This is good news for the Flash Platform as Google’s interest in continuing its support of the technology is a clear indication that the web still needs Flash.

You can learn more about this from Adobe’s website and the Chromium Blog.

Adobe announced that the official launch of CS5 is going to be April 12. The new version of the creative suite that includes Flash CS5 is to be unveiled at a global event to be webcast live on AdobeTV. You can learn more about the new features of CS5 and register for the launch event at Adobe CS5 Launch page.

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]