Adobe launches Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder

Bangalore: Adobe has announced the availability of Adobe Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder software, next generation Flash Platform tooling for building multi-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs). In addition, Adobe added a new Social service to the recently introduced Adobe Flash Platform Services. The Social service streamlines integration between Web applications and 14 leading social networks using Facebook Connect, Sign-in with Twitter, MySpaceID and LinkedIn.

David Wadhwani, General manager and Vice president, Adobe Platform Business Unit says, "Companies are under extraordinary pressure to keep their competitive edge. The Flash Platform helps companies deploy business-critical applications to a wide audience, while ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder truly accelerate the development process. We look forward to seeing what our talented developer community creates with these latest additions in our developer ecosystem."

Flash Builder 4
Flash Builder 4 (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) is a professional-grade Eclipse based development tool for rapidly building multi-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs) and content using the open source Flex framework. Developers can build more intuitive Web applications that enable customers, partners, and employees to better understand and use data, leading to increased levels of productivity, satisfaction and effectiveness. Flash Builder 4 accelerates development and testing of RIAs and content, providing new and improved coding and testing capabilities, while allowing designers and developers to more efficiently collaborate using new integrated workflows with Adobe Creative Suite. It enables enhanced integration with a variety of data back ends (including PHP, ColdFusion, Java and Adobe LiveCycle) and easy introspection and consumption of REST and SOAP based services.

Open source Flex 4
The updated open source Flex 4 framework, also now available, includes a new component architecture for RIAs providing complete separation of appearance and functionality, enabling each to be changed independently without affecting the other. The new skinning and component architecture, code-named Spark, builds on top of the existing MX architecture, providing a much more efficient mechanism for developers and designers to work together to control the appearance of their Flex applications.

"Adobe Flash Builder 4 and the Flex framework have become invaluable in Qualcomm's user experience efforts. With the release of Flash Builder 4, it has enabled us to build projects - from mobile to Web to the desktop - faster and in a cleaner, more concise fashion. As a result, our team can now explore new ideas without the previous overhead of recoding user interface elements," says Chris Griffith, Staff Engineer, Qualcomm

In collaboration with Gigya, the new Adobe Flash Platform Services Social service enables developers to rapidly integrate applications created with Flash Builder and Adobe Flash Professional with social networks. Developers no longer need to do the work of integrating with each separate, constantly changing social network service API to provide users access to multi networks. A single Flash Platform Services layer does the heavy lifting across multiple social networks. Additionally, the Social service will monitor each social network site to ensure changes to APIs do not break applications.

"We are pleased to partner with Adobe to provide technology for the Adobe Flash Platform Services Social Service. With the recent growth in referred traffic coming from social networks, this new service will help developers more easily create innovative applications that can reach larger audiences. Our customers experience increases in registration rates, social referred traffic and time spent by establishing and optimizing connections to the social networks," says David A. Yovanno, Chief Executive Officer, Gigya