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.

 The 1.0 version of Internet Explorer 8 was made available for public download today. It is important for anyone in the web business to download and test that your websites do not break on IE8, whether or not you personally use it, because the majority of web users still use IE.

IE8 is only available on the Windows. Highlights of the release include a new address bar, WebSlices, and a feature called “Accelerators”. IE8 also improves its compliance with CSS and has a number of Ajax enhancements. You can download it from this link.

Adobe recently released the Linux version of the AIR runtime making it now possible to run desktop based web applications created using Flex or the Flash authoring tool on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The install base of Adobe AIR is still nominal in comparison to that of the Flash Player which basically almost found on every single computer connected to the internet. The availability of AIR on Linux will help increase the potentional market base for those developing AIR applications. The new runtime can be downloaded from Adobe’ s website here.

The mobile version of Adobe AIR is also expected to be released sometime next year.

 One day after the release of the new Flash Player, Adobe is shipping Creative Suite 4. Adobe CS4 is shipping in seven bundles, Premium and Standard editions for Design, Web, and Production, and a Master Collection bundle. Check out the prices and bundle details over at Adobe. Those wishing to try out the applications will have to wait a bit as the demo versions are not out yet.

 Though some of us have been running the beta version of it for months now, the official final release of Flash Player 10 is finally out. What I personally find most exciting about this release is the addition of a native 3D engine, but what will in fact make this player even more ubiquitous is its support for HD video – the quality of it is unbelievable, but you will need a really fast connection to enjoy it.

Make sure that you get the new player to make sure that you can view all upcoming super cool Flash websites. There is still no release date for Flash CS4, but it can’t be too far now that the Player is released.