Adobe Systems released on Monday beta versions of three programming projects for producing online applications that run in its Flash Player, software that's widely used but also under competitive threat from other Web technologies.
First is a beta version of Flash Catalyst, a programming tool that's meant for the designer crowd rather than the coding crowd. Catalyst lets designers create a Flash application's user interface in Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator applications, import the files, attach a variety of actions to user interface elements, then produce the Flash application for production or for handing off to more serious programmers.
Second is the beta of Flash Builder 4, the harder-core programming tool previously called Flex Builder. This tool, based on the Eclipse programming software, employs Adobe's open-source Flex framework for building advanced Flash applications and is for the serious programming set who works in an integrated development environment (IDE). For example, it can be used to link Flash applications with a variety of back-end data sources for advanced features.
Third is the beta of Flex 4 framework that provides underpinnings for Flash applications, including everything from user interface components to animation technology. Flex 4, code-named Gumbo, is an open-source project.
Flash got its start as a way to produce animations on Web sites, leading to gripes that its timeline-based view of the world was alien to programmers. For the animation-oriented set, Adobe still offers its Flash Professional software, but for others, Adobe has the Flex-based approach for producing Flash applications.
Adobe offers a variety of tools in an attempt to appeal to a variety of programming styles. A single project can bounce among different people using the different tools, said Steven Heintz, principal product manager of the Adobe Platform business.
"We've really made all these tools work together," Heintz said. "For pieces of the same project, you can use the tools best for the job. We believe this is better than jamming all this together into one massive tool that's totally inappropriate."
Flash faces a number of challengers. Most directly is Microsoft's Silverlight, version 3 of which is set to be launched July 10. But Google, Yahoo, and browser makers also are advancing what can be done directly in Web browsers without relying on plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight.
And HTML 5, an still-in-progress revision of the Hypertext Markup Language used to describe Web pages, comes with a variety of features such as the ability to run multiple tasks at the same time and to play video and audio as easily as browsers can display images today, and Google, Apple, Opera, and Firefox developer Mozilla are pushing what can be done with the JavaScript language for programming Web pages.
Adobe argues that it's got consistency on its side with Flash, though. Web users tend to upgrade to the newest Flash player relatively rapidly, and Flash works consistently regardless of which browser it's plugged into or which operating system it's running on. For programmers in the HTML camp, Adobe offers its DreamWeaver development software.
In contrast HTML and JavaScript--including advanced JavaScript applications built with technology called Ajax--varies from browser to browser, said Shafath Syed, a product marketing manager with the Adobe Platform group.
"We've come full circle" in the browser market to the mid-1990s browser wars, with different interpretations of standards and new features and differing support for that technology, Syed said. "That's always a challenge."
Another challenge both camps face is spreading to the increasingly important realm of mobile phones. Flash, for example, doesn't run on Apple's iPhone and is still under development for phones based on Google's Android operating system. Those devices support JavaScript and some HTML 5 features, though, they, of course, lack much of the processing power and memory to make full use of it.
The Adobe programming tools also can be used in the production of applications that run on AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime that lets Flash applications run on their own outside a browser.
Adobe Systems wants to have it both ways.
Microsoft's power with programmers is tethered to desktops and laptops, the vast majority of which run Windows. Google is trying to dominate what it believes is the new frontier, cloud computing, where applications run on the Web. Adobe, though, is trying to run down the middle with a strategy that touches on both domains.
"It's a balance of the client and cloud together that makes for the most effective applications and the best development," said Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, who's planning to speak on the subject in a keynote speech Monday at the company's Max conference in San Francisco.
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Since Adobe's $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005, programming technology has been rising in importance within a company that got its start with publishing software such as Photoshop. The technology that brought the two companies together, Flash, will hog the spotlight at the conference.
Flash got its start as a way to give Web pages animations and basic applications such as games, but it's grown up since then. The Flex technology has given developers a more mature programming model, and the addition of video-streaming abilities to the Flash Player that's plugged into the vast majority of Web browsers has given Adobe's technology incumbent status. Who can live online without YouTube?
Adobe is still working on Flash, releasing Flash Player 10, aka Astro, in October. At Max, though, a Flash cousin called AIR--the Adobe Integrated Runtime--will share the stage with the release of version 1.5.
Flash and AIR are key to bridging the cloud-PC gap. For example, Adobe has launched an online Photoshop.com service, where members can upload, edit, and share photos. The site uses Flash to run the processing-intensive editing software on people's own computers, not Adobe's servers, Lynch said.
"Our operational costs for hosting that application are much lower than if we had server-side processing," and users get better performance, Lynch said.
But Flash still lives largely within the browser. Adobe hopes to uproot it with AIR, a "runtime" foundation for housing applications. AIR runs Flash programs but also has a built-in engine for showing Web pages and for running programs written in JavaScript, which is widely used for Web-based applications. And AIR is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and programmers who write AIR applications don't have to worry about what operating system is on a person's computer.
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Flash Player 10 was code-named Astro.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)Astro is launched.
On Wednesday, Adobe Systems announced the release of a major update to its Flash technology to endow Web sites with better video, audio, and graphics. The new version 10 was code-named Astro, and it arrived just days after Microsoft released version 2.0 of its rival Silverlight software.
Flash Player 10, a free download also available for Windows and Mac users from Download.com, includes a number of new features:
• Easier-to-use 3D graphics effects.
• Better text handling for more sophisticated layouts combining words and graphics, more refined typography, and better multilingual applications.
• Better sound handling, so that different audio signals can be mixed together--for example, a music sound track with a game's audio effects.
• High-performance visual effects using technology called Pixel Bender that also works with After Effects CS4 and Photoshop CS4.
• Better abilities to tap into hardware acceleration.
• Adaptable video streaming that can adjust to changing network throughput.
Flash Player is a key part of Adobe's push to make Web-based applications more powerful. Adobe's Flex framework can be used to create applications that run on the Flash Player or as standalone computer applications running on AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime.
Flash and Silverlight aren't the only ways to make these so-called rich Internet applications, though. Silverlight, which drafts off Microsoft's strong developer base and its .Net programming technology, is a newer competitor. And JavaScript is growing up as a way to build more elaborate interfaces in Web applications. Flash, however, enjoys a very broad adoption, and users upgrade to the newer versions relatively swiftly.
Flash Player 10 also is used within Adobe's Creative Suite 4, a broad range of applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere that just began shipping. Because control panels are written with Flash technology, CS4 menus can be extended by third parties more easily, and Adobe plans to release a Configurator by the end of the month that will make it easy to create custom control panels.
Update 11:25 a.m. PDT: One big Pixel Bender fan is online photo editing site Picnik. Flash Player 10 speeds the site and enables "mind-blowing effects." It also means third parties can create effects of their own using the Pixel Bender technology. See some examples below.
"Future plans with Flash Player 10 include the addition of super high‐resolution photo capabilities, more sophisticated editing features, and the ability to load and save photos without involving an upload to a server," Picnik said Wednesday.
One special effect enabled by Flash Player 10 on Picnik's online photo editing site.
(Credit: Picnik)
Another Flash Player 10 effect in Picnik.
(Credit: Picnik)
Buzzword offers the usual word processing tools, such as a spelling checker and keyboard shortcuts.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Adobe Systems' beta release of the free Acrobat.com suite Monday should appeal to small-business users. In our early tests, the stand-outs are tools for Web conferencing and directly sharing text and PDF documents.
Acrobat.com includes a Web-based word processor, conferencing and remote access, PDF creation, and 5 gigabytes of file storage.
I like the services' uncomplicated, charcoal-background interfaces. Like other online word processors, Buzzword is no Microsoft Word killer, but speedy enough to serve as a go-anywhere text editor. Documents can be exported as Microsoft Word DOC or DOCX; PDF; rich text; HTML; or XML.
Inviting someone else to edit a file takes one step, although my colleague Josh Lowensohn, on the other end, had problems initially logging in for access. I'm hoping that Adobe removes the log-in speed bumps.
Once you're in, conferencing capabilities shine in Acrobat.com. In addition to one-off invitations to view and edit a Buzzword document, it's easy to launch an impromptu meeting. The Meet button in Buzzword opens Acrobat ConnectNow, a lightweight cousin of Acrobat Connect Pro, announced earlier this month.
ConnectNow enables screen sharing, chatting with a headset and Webcam, whiteboarding, and phone conferencing. Once I accepted the ConnectNow add-in, it switched from the browser to its own window, which then appeared in front of other windows to display chatting and Webcam views. You can allow a user to control your desktop remotely, and cut them off just as quickly. Other than the log-in glitch, the ease of use might bring a frown to the folks at WebEx, owned by Cisco Systems.
You can invite people to edit and comment on Buzzword documents.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)Makers of online office suites like Zoho and ThinkFree, on the other hand, needn't worry, for now at least. Buzzword as a standalone word processor is pretty, though unremarkable. It offers only seven fonts alongside basic text choices such as bold and strikethrough, with some more color choices than Google Docs and other online word processors. By contrast, Google Docs allows 10 fonts and ThinkFree provides more than five dozen. I'd like more formatting options if I were using Buzzword as a starting point to make interactive and print-ready PDFs.
Keyboard shortcuts work, such as CTRL-Z on a PC to undo the last action. Still, some annoyances to typing within a Flash environment include disabled options, such as Copy and Paste, that otherwise appear when you click the right mouse key in Windows. And CTRL-F to search for text sometimes failed.
Buzzword does let you draw tables and bullet points, and insert images. Special characters for typing accent marks in other languages are easy to find. Red squiggles underline potentially misspelled words and suggest alternatives. There's a running word count and link to a history of edits at the bottom of the screen.
Uh oh, really?
(Credit: CNET Networks)That's not enough to make me ditch more than two years of relying upon Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Nevertheless, the Adobe online suite should lure business users who already make a lot of PDFs and may not bother to jump to another brand for online conferencing.
Acrobat 9 software, due for stores in July, will stand out for being able to bundle video and animation within PDFs, enriching the online life of a format originally focused around the printed page.
But Buzzword doesn't appear to embed videos. Nor can you use Acrobat.com beta's PDF creator to bundle MOV or other video and animation file types into Portable Document Format.
ConnectNow appears in front of other windows so you can chat via text and Webcam with another user.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)Doing so would require Acrobat 9, but its starting price of $299 will deter people on a budget from exploring its rich features. They may already turn to free, third-party apps or online converters to make flat PDFs for printing.
Adobe should make even more goodies available for free or at a lower price if it aims for PDFs to get rich quickly with Flash videos, PowerPoint files, and even applications and games. Such creation capabilities remain in the hands of those who can spend hundreds of dollars on Acrobat 9. Google gave away Maps, Earth, and SketchUp, after all.
For example, PDF geospatial mapping, a plus for architects or city planners, will only be available in the $699 Acrobat Pro Extended 9.
Adobe already offered the online Photoshop Express and is hinting that the desktop app may become extensible within widgets. It remains to be seen how the company will integrate its new online services with the next, hulking Creative Suite, expected this fall.
ConnectNow enables conference calling, handy for business meetings.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)Adobe unveiled an online community Monday with a word processor; file storage and sharing; and deep tie-ins to a newly Flash-enabled Acrobat 9.
The online push for Acrobat is a bold move for a brand perhaps best associated with the free and nearly ubiquitous Acrobat Reader, which opens print-ready Portable Document Format, or PDF, files. Now, PDFs will play movies.
The announcement comes in advance of the release of Acrobat 9 document-creation software, which adds dynamic features such as integration of animation, dynamic maps, 256-bit encryption, and improved forms.
The free Acrobat.com beta includes the Buzzword word processor. Its ConnectNow Web conferencing and desktop sharing tool enables chatting via text, video, and voice. The hosted services invite file storage and sharing with the capability to convert up to five documents to PDF.
Buzzword and companion tools would provide interactivity lacking in leading online word processors such as Google Docs.
The free Acrobat.com launched in beta mode on Monday.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)Users can store files on Acrobat.com and join each other in virtual meeting rooms to share identical document views in real time. The site also can host data from forms created in Acrobat software.
Acrobat 9 document-creation software will arrive with a slew of support for creating interactive, secure documents and integration with Acrobat.com.
Acrobat users can convert MOV and WMV files to Flash content that can be embedded within PDFs alongside audio content and even 3D models. The free Acrobat Reader 9 will play the movies, eliminating the need to open other media players.
The new PDF Portfolios feature in Acrobat 9 lets users drag and drop content into a portfolio, then choose from myriad layout and presentation options.
Mapping features only in Acrobat Pro Extended 9 preserve geospatial coordinates and enable users to mark locations and measure distances.
The next Acrobat will take snapshots of Web pages and convert entire pages or chunks of them to a PDF that preserves links and animation.
Developers can tweak layouts with Flex Builder 3 or Flash CS3.
The new Acrobat.com will enable users to stash their work, edit documents, and collaborate with each other.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)Adobe also tried to make it easier to for companies to make pages match visually with themes and custom logos, and it improved tools for comparing documents.
For creating online forms, Acrobat 9 adds intelligence to recognize content for conversion to fillable fields. And a forms tracking dashboard will show, for instance, the status of responses to a mass party invitation e-mail and let a user send reminders to guests. Responses can be sorted, filtered, and exported to spreadsheets.
Acrobat 9's security enhancements enable users to add 256-bit encryption, used by banks online, to PDFs.
Redaction tools, a key selling point of Acrobat 8, will offer searches for numeric patterns in addition to multiple words and phrases. A company could, for example, find every accidental mention of a social security number or top-secret product being developed and black out the potential leaks from a PDF with one blow.
Business users could opt to access documents at Acrobat online or via SharePoint workspaces, network folders or WebDAV.
Acrobat Pro Extended 9 will enable maps to be marked up, preserving latitude and longitude.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Acrobat 9 comes in three flavors, set for stores in the coming weeks: Standard at $299 or $99 to upgrade, Pro for $449 or $159 to upgrade, and Pro Extended for $699 or $229 to upgrade. Pro Extended also comes with Adobe Presenter, which plugs into Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 for adding interactivity to presentations.
We'll have a review of Acrobat 9 software once we receive final code, and we'll share our experiences soon with Acrobat.com beta.
I still groan when I have to open a PDF file from the Web (my PCs make loud grinding noises), so I'm curious to see how the new tools might make PDFs faster to open as well as more dynamic to explore.
PDF Portfolios in Acrobat 9 will package FLV and SWF content with the usual word processing files and more.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Adobe Systems is offering two-day trials of three beta applications from its next Creative Suite package.
The previews of Dreamweaver for Web design, Fireworks for image editing, and Soundbooth for audio editing became available Monday.
Trials expire after 48 hours for most people, but registered CS3 users get to keep using the CS4 betas until the final applications replace them.
Adobe hasn't publicly confirmed its planned shipping date or the name for the next Creative Suite, which we're nicknaming CS4. Adobe Creative Suite 3 was released in March 2007.
We took a quick test drive of the Dreamweaver trial and liked some of the changes. Among the touted enhancements are a Related Files Toolbar and Code Navigator. The Properties panel integrates HTML and CSS coding, which could save time for those who edit dynamic sites. A new Live View Mode, driven by Webkit open-source rendering, previews pages within Dreamweaver, eliminating the need to open a browser. Adobe intends for this feature to make it easier to debug JavaScript as well as to work with Flash animation.
The interface of Fireworks, originally from Macromedia, finally resembles those of other applications in the Creative Suite. Fireworks features compatibility with Adobe's AIR, Flash, and Flex Builder as well as HTML. And users can export design mockups as high fidelity, interactive, and secure Adobe PDF files.
Soundbooth adds support for multiple track editing as well as volume matching across audio files. Users can preview the compression settings before saving MP3s. Speech recognition is supposed to enable quick, searchable transcripts of dialog content.
There's no word yet on whether the next rough draft of Photoshop will be available for a free trial. However, Photoshop's next iteration may become available in widgets, enabling users to mix and mash up some features with third-party content, according to a blog post last week by Photoshop product manager John Nash. We suspect that there will be more opportunities to blur the lines between the desktop, the Web, and mobile platforms within the next Creative Suite.
System requirements for the Windows trials demand a machine running XP or Vista with at least 512MB of RAM, 1 gigabyte of disk space, and a Pentium 4 processor. Mac users must have OS X version 10.4.11 or later on a PowerPC G5 or Intel-based system. Soundbooth, however, won't run on a PowerPC Mac.
Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.
In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.
The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up Google Maps, for instance, to display apartment listings, ecological pollution, and even UFO sightings.
"The appeal of extending one's app with lightweight, cross-platform, network-aware widgets is so obvious that we were busy building support in my first app some eight years ago--and we had to build our own Flash Player clone to do it!" Nack wrote.
Developers would ideally be able to write one bunch of code rather than six separate chunks to create widgets for panels from Photoshop, Illustrator vector illustration, and InDesign page layout software, Nack added.
Adobe made its flagship photo-editing software available online with the March release of Photoshop Express.
The company aims to tell the public more about the next iteration of its Creative Suite on May 27.
A prerelease, beta edition of Flash Player 10 became available Tuesday via Adobe Labs. New features include effects for 3D-rendering effects and text-rendering enhancements.
Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.
At the company's Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.
The New York Times is releasing a beta of an AIR application called ShifD (seen here on an iPhone), which enables users to move content--including Web links, notes, and Web maps--from their desktop computer to a mobile device.
(Credit: New York Times)Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned.
Adobe has been working on AIR for at least two years, when Kevin Lynch, now Adobe's chief technology officer, first publicly spoke about it. The company plans to build AIR versions of many of its Web applications, including photo-imaging application Photoshop Express and Premier Express for editing video, he said.
AIR is software for making Web applications appear like more like desktop programs. Applications can run offline, access data on a person's hard drive, have a desktop icon, and run without the need of a browser.
Developers can use any Web development kit, such as Ajax frameworks, to write applications that will run on AIR or they can use Flex.
These Web-native desktop applications have become an active area of software development--Adobe says that there are over 100 AIR applications--and alternatives to AIR are starting to appear.
The Mozilla Foundation, makers of the Firefox Web browser, launched a project called Prism that brings offline access to Web applications.
Lynch said that AIR is far ahead of what Prism offers but he expects many other platforms that bridge the Web with desktops to emerge.
"We're just getting back the lost treasures of the desktop that we lost when we went to the Web," Lynch said.
He said AIR is not competitive with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems; it's a layer above operating systems that enables people to use Web development techniques and toolkits.
A version of AIR for Linux is expected later this year, he said. Adobe will also create versions that run on mobile devices in the future.
Salesforce.com on Monday will release a free toolkit that will allow developers to write applications on its Force.com hosted development platform using Flex and AIR. The main driver for bringing offline access to Web applications is mobility, said Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at Salesforce.com.
The New York Times, for example, has created an application with AIR that will enable people to transfer content, such as Web links and maps, from their desktops to mobile devices.
"Our customers want offline access because they have users in mobile contexts like people in hospitals with tablet PCs or retail settings like supermarkets," Gross said. "I think we're going to see a variety of new technologies around how to effectively create offline Web applications."
Adobe made the low-end edition of Flex open source to lure developers who prefer open-source and standards-based software because it does not tie them to one proprietary technology or vendor.
Lynch said that Adobe intends to use open-source software and practices more. He noted that many pieces of its development products are already open-source, including the scripting engine in Flash, which was donated to the Mozilla Foundation for inclusion in the Firefox Web browser.
Lynch, who was named chief technology officer of Adobe earlier this month, said Adobe's different product teams are changing to embrace rich Internet applications, AIR, and online services to complement its existing products.
"This is a very, very important time in Adobe's history. We've made some big shifts--Postscript, multimedia, the Web," he said. "Rich Internet applications is one of those important transitions."
There are invitations to Phoenix, the new app discussed in this post, set aside for Webware readers. Read on to learn how to get yours.
As I reported from Demo 2008, new Flash- and Flex-based Web apps are putting traditional desktop apps to shame. The database Blist, the widget maker Sprout, and the photo manager Joggle are all Web-based apps that give up almost nothing to run inside a browser.
Flash-based applications are inherently cross-platform, because there are Flash runtimes that work in Internet Explorer and Firefox; on Macs, Windows, and Linux. (There are even Flash runtimes for mobile phones and set-top boxes, although Adobe's expensive licensing schemes for those platforms do a lot to keep Flash apps off them.) With Adobe's new AIR runtime environment being basically a wrapper for Flash and Flex, we can expect that many of these Flash apps will be released as independent app-like products, but with Flash's cross-platform and Web-native advantages.
Flash has its downsides, of course. It's yet another layer of platform software for an app to run on. For the most part, today's overpowered personal computers and fast broadband connections punch through this inefficiency. However, in some cases, Flash just doesn't offer up enough performance. The personal finance app Voyant, for example, eschews Flash for Java; a Voyant developer told me it's faster at the math his app needs to perform.
Online apps in general have other advantages. Most offer Web-based storage and built-in access to the world's largest collaboration network: the Internet. Nobody likes hassling with LAN-based workgroup software installations, and with Web apps you don't have to.
And I'll tell you this: I'm not seeing nearly the same creativity today in traditional software that I am seeing on Flash and in browser-based apps. Flash-based apps are finally beginning to compete head-on with standard software. Many new Flash apps aren't just different. They're better.
Even rich media apps will fall
Case in point: the Aviary suite of graphics apps, coming out soon from the team at Worth1000. The first app, the image editor Phoenix, will make you question the value of your Photoshop license. Not that it's a drop-in replacement for Photoshop today, but it gives you a strong indication that the need for expensive apps licensed on a per-PC basis is ending.
Who needs Photoshop?
(Credit: CNET / Rafe Needleman)I experimented with Phoenix a bit. I can't give it a deep review, since I'm not an expert in image editing. However, it certainly does a lot of the things I've done when poking around in Photoshop: It has rich tools for selected image elements, layering items you're working on, and transforming parts of the image. Lacking, of course, is plug-in support and Photoshop's snappiness when it runs on a fast PC. But the capability to open an image directly from a URL is pretty cool, and I would fully expect to see the capability to write files right back soon as well.
Other Aviary graphics apps to come include a color palette creator, an "algorithm-based pattern generator," a vector editor (competitor to Adobe Illustrator?), a 3D modeler, and other non-graphics tools such as a word processor, an audio editor, a "music generator," plus a network file storage system and a marketplace for the exchange of creative works.
The full rundown of tools the team hopes to build sounds hopelessly ambitious and reminds me of Zoho, which has a too-big suite of not-quite-developed online productivity apps. Probably a better strategy would be to focus on the key moneymakers and open up a plug-in platform so other developers could add to the ecosystem. But I don't really want to critique the company before the first app is even out of beta.
In fact, I want to encourage this crazy ambition. If Worth1000 can build a suite of professional media creation and management apps all at once using new Web platforms--and even if it tries but in the end cannot-- it could encourage other developers to stretch beyond today's current Web 2.0 apps. We certainly could use more real Web apps, and fewer me-too social networks or developers' resumes masquerading as products.
See also: Picnik; and watch for Adobe's own Photoshop Online.
If you want to try out Phoenix, there are 100 early-bird invitations set aside for Webware readers. Go here to enter your e-mail address. You have to click over from this story to get on the list--cutting and pasting the link won't work.
BOSTON--Adobe Systems' chief software architect, Kevin Lynch, gave a glimpse of a few goodies for developers and designers meant to make media-rich Web sites run faster.
At the company's FlashForward conference on Wednesday, Lynch said that the next version of the Flash Player, code-named Astro, will have "significant performance improvements" for people making video-rich Web applications. That includes better manipulation of three-dimensional images, he said during a keynote presentation of the Flash developer conference.
After his talk, Lynch declined to give a date for when Astro will ship, but said he'll be providing more details at the upcoming Max conference in Chicago next month.
Adobe chief software architect Kevin Lynch tells Flash developers to think big.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)Also coming in the next few weeks will be an updated Flash Player 9, code-named Moviestar, which will include support for the H.264 video standard that will show high-definition quality videos.
"We're really focused on the whole video workflow," he said. "Were going to keep investing and keep innovating."
One way Adobe plans to improve Web application performance is through the introduction of a cache mechanism in the next version of its Flex development tool, which Adobe is in the process of open sourcing.
Code-named Moxie, Flex 3 will have a Framework cache which will download the files required to run Flex applications to a browser's cache the first time a user accesses a Flex application. Those same components can be reused in other Flex applications. That means quicker downloads and the ability for developers to use ActionScript--the JavaScript-compatible language in Flex--to write more ambitious Web applications, Adobe executives said.
Lynch showed off applications written with Flex to run on AIR. AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a download for running Web applications on desktop PCs on Windows, Mac and eventually Linux and mobile devices.
Some of the new AIR applications haven't been shown publicly yet, including one called Art Musheen (no Web site available yet), a slick drawing application with the kind of animation that people expect from Flash applications.
An AIR application, Buzzword, can import Flickr photos based on tags.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)Adobe will make a second beta of AIR available at the Max conference.
Lynch said that beta will be have the final APIs, which include the ability to access a local file system architect and network connection, the ability send out notifications to users, local storage, automatic updates, and drag-and-drop capabilities.
