Did you purchase CS4 Web Premium or CS4 Master Collection on or after September 15, 2009? Then get your free copy of Flex Builder 3 Standard today!

Check out https://freeriatools.adobe.com/cs for more info.

I would also like to remind you that Flex Builder 3 is also/still free for education and unemployed developers. Additionally ColdFusion is also free for education.

We’ve been talking about Flash Catalyst (the project formerly known as Thermo) and Flash Builder 4 (the updated and renamed Flex Builder) for quite some time now. Today, we’re releasing the first public beta for both products.

I am really excited (and I’m pretty sure all of us at Adobe are) to see what you guys are going to create with these new tools and how it’s going to improve your workflow. You can get the betas on Adobe Labs. To help you get started, we’ve created a bunch of tutorials and samples to get you going. I’ve just listed a couple of them here. For more tutorials and samples, check out the Adobe Developer Connection. Flash on!

Flash Catalyst:
The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce designers, familiar with Photoshop, to the basic concepts and workflow involved in using the beta version of Flash Catalyst.

This tutorial covers all the skills and techniques needed to take a concept from a static file to a completed interactive, multimedia interface.

[ Read more ]

In this tutorial Andrew Shorten shows you how to build an employee address book application that lets users enter search criteria and view a list of results fetched from a database (via a ColdFusion service), from which they can select an employee to get their full contact information. The completed application could work either as a browser-based application (using Adobe Flash Player) or a desktop application (using Adobe AIR).

[ Read more ]

For more information, tutorials and samples for Flash Catalyst, check out http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/tutorials/

Flash Builder 4:
Matt Chotin (product manager for Flex) provides an overview of what you’ll encounter as you play with the new SDK and framework.

The work on the Flex SDK has been focused around three primary themes: “Design in Mind”, “Developer Productivity”, “Framework Evolution”.

[ Read more ]

Tim Buntel (product manager for Flash Builder) provides an overview of what’s new in Flash Builder 4. 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.

[ Read more ]

For more information, tutorials and samples for Flash Builder 4, check out http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/tutorials/

A few weeks ago, most of us on the Platform Evangelism team reached out to the developer community, offering free Adobe Flex Builder 3 licenses to unemployed developers so they can learn a new skill and raise their profile. Needless to say that we were swamped with email requests. Today, this is now a more formal offering, with information and access to the program available at https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/

To get you up and running with Flex in no time, Safari Books Online is offering a free 60-day subscription to a collection of books on Flex 3 and related RIA development technologies.

More information on https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/

The Fiat eco:Drive application built by AKQA won a MediaGuardian award this week  in the “DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY” category. eco:Drive is an innovative application built on AIR that aims to improve your driving skills. It analyzes your driving style and helps increase your fuel efficiency, saving you money and minimizing your CO2 emissions.

Andrew and I recorded a video about eco:Drive a few months ago. If you haven’t seen it and would like to find out more about why and how eco:Drive was built, check out the video here.

Congrats to Rick, Adam and Harald at AKQA and Claudio at Fiat.

“Aruba, Jamaica, oooh I wanna take ya…”. That’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard the Cocomo codename. Cocomo is far more than a cheesy song though. It was actually the acronym of Common Collaboration Model.

Cocomo is now the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service. AFCS is a Platform as a Service that allows Flash Platform developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA. Using both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Adobe Flash Collaboration Service allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before.

Check out the AFCS team blog for more information on the roadmap. Want to start adding collaboration and multi-user capabilities to your applications? Then sign up for a free developer account on Adobe Labs.