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Adobe kickstarts Flash Builder


By Jeff Feinman
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June 1, 2009 —  After releasing Flash Player 10 last fall, Adobe Systems is adding summertime spark to some key components of the Flash platform.

The Flex Builder Eclipse-based IDE has been rebranded as Flash Builder in order to differentiate the open-source Flex framework and the commercially available Builder IDE. The name Flex will only refer to the open-source Flex framework. Adobe executives said that the Builder brand was brought under the Flash umbrella because much of the Flash Builder user base consists of ActionScript developers who are developing Flash content, not Flex applications.

“Since we introduced Flex, there’s always been the Flex framework and Flex Builder,” said Dave Gruber, group product marketing manager at Adobe. “There’s been a fair amount of confusion for people saying, ‘Is that open source?’ There’s been confusion about what Flex is, so we’re trying to clean that up.”  

One thing that Adobe is trying to do around Flash is to increase productivity for developers and end users. Flash Builder 4, expected to be announced June 1, comes with interactive visual editing capabilities for Adobe’s ActionScript and MXML user interface markup language. There are also new debugging and memory profiling features.

Additionally, Flash Builder has a new service integration wizard, and there are also new user interface form generators and drag-and-drop capabilities for user interface components.

In Flash Builder, Adobe has tried to improve day-to-day coding tasks with new features around code templating, formatting and improved code refactoring, said Tim Buntel, senior product manager with Adobe. Additionally, code generation behind common events and buttons associated with UI objects is handled automatically. There is also a new feature for unit testing that both runs and generates tests.

Buntel said Adobe expects Flash developers to utilize the Flash codebase. “This isn’t a WYSIWYG application experience,” Buntel said. “The design view is really good for laying out the component and wiring them up together, but then typically you will go into code view. This is a full, functional, professional IDE, so these are coders that should be comfortable with that.”

Buntel added that Builder has always been targeted toward traditional application developers, but some of the new coding features make it easier for Web developers to create apps using the tool.

Beyond the update to Flash Builder, Adobe has also introduced the public beta of Flash Catalyst, an interface designer for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding. Gruber said Flash Catalyst targets application user interface designers, and it lets designers create and assemble user interface assets.

Flash Catalyst was previously codenamed Thermo.




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