The entire Adobe Flex team is delighted to introduce you to Adobe Flash Builder 4, formerly known as Adobe Flex Builder. Over the past two years, we've been working to evolve more than just the name of the product. We've taken the development environment for creating great applications for the Flash platform in exciting new directions to deliver productivity to developers of all types. While the name has changed, this is still the evolution of Flex Builder 3-a professional-grade, Eclipse-based development tool designed to help you rapidly build rich Internet applications (RIAs) and content using the open-source Flex framework-but with an incredible collection of powerful new features.

This final release builds on top of the two public betas released during 2009. All of the features previewed in the beta releases are now complete and you'll find several new additions in the final product as well. This brief article will introduce you to just a few of these new features. In case you want the detail on every new feature included in this version of the product (and there are 70+ new features), I've listed them out in my blog post, together with links to documentation so that you can learn more. Also be sure to check out all of the other content on the Adobe Developer Connection site for more details. We've posted many outstanding videos, articles, and samples to get you started with your experience with Flash Builder 4.

When an application begins with a very specific design as its inspiration, ensuring that the details of the design are realized in the final application is critical. How does content move from Adobe's leading creative tools through the process of adding interactivity and finishing with complete integration with the application logic and the application's servers and/or services-all while still remaining true to the original designer's intent? That question is answered with our designer/developer workflow theme. It's all about empowering better collaboration between developers using Flash Builder and users of Adobe's creative tools, with emphasis on two key products in the Flash platform: Adobe Flash Professional and Adobe Flash Catalyst.

For Flash Professional, Flash Builder 4 features a new workflow for adding Flash content to a Flex application: simply drag out the "New Flash Component" or "New Flash Container" item from the Components panel and place it anywhere on the design canvas. You can launch Flash Professional and create or edit the content, and then click "done" to return to Flash Builder 4 with the FLA and SWC files exported to the Flex project.

In this release we've also worked to improve interoperability between Flash Builder and Flash Professional - from within the next version of Flash Professional you will be able to select Flash Builder 4 as your default code editing environment for ActionScript, rather than using the built-in Actions panel. Alternatively, you can choose to create a new Flash Professional project within Flash Builder 4 - simply designate an FLA to work with, code the necessary ActionScript classes and then you can initiate publishing, testing and debugging in Flash Professional right from within Flash Builder 4.

Adobe Flash Catalyst is a new product that makes it easy for designers to create RIA user interfaces, based on the Flex framework, from artwork imported from Adobe Creative Suite tools. Flash Builder 4 provides a simple workflow for importing either an entire project or a set of component skins from an upcoming version of Flash Catalyst, thus allowing designers to collaborate with developers more easily than ever before.

If you're new to Flex, you'll find a wealth of information to help you get started available from the new Start page that you will see when you first launch the application. We've provided tutorials, feature videos, and sample code to help you become productive right away.

From design to data to coding and testing, we think you'll find Adobe Flash Builder 4 an incredible tool for RIA development - the entire product team looks forward to seeing what you build with it!