Adobe Launches Flex 3 Public Beta

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the public beta of Adobe Flex 3 software, the cross platform, free open source framework for creating rich Internet applications. This major functional release adds rich new UI capabilities, enhanced developer productivity, desktop deployment and enterprise testing and performance tools.

“The RIA revolution is fully underway on the Web, and Flex is on the leading edge with the most expressive and quickest development framework available,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe.

Flex 3 public beta marks the first significant deliverable for the open source Flex project, beginning with the availability of nightly builds and a public bug database.

Starting with Flex 3, developers will be able to freely download, extend, and contribute to the source code for the Flex compiler, components and application framework. The scripting language in Flex is the most advanced implementation of the JavaScript standard, ECMAScript 4, and runs on the Adobe Flash® Player using the open source Tamarin virtual machine, recently contributed to the Mozilla Foundation. The Flex 3 public beta kicks off the project by providing a full roadmap for Flex 3, including detailed feature specifications, nightly builds, and a public bug database where developers can log and track issues and feature requests.

Flex 3 includes major advancements in the area of designer and developer workflow, including powerful integration with Creative Suite 3 software design tools that allow for direct import of CS3 assets into Flex. Other design enhancements include deeper support for visual skinning and styling, full language intelligence support for CSS, and the Flex Builder 3 Design View, which lets developers edit design and layout for complex applications.

For the development environment, Flex 3 offers numerous code enhancements that increase productivity. For example, Flex Builder 3 now supports refactoring, allowing developers to make substantial changes within a project quickly and consistently. Flex 3 includes memory and performance profiling, enabling developers to evaluate the internal operations of their application running in the browser or on Adobe AIR. Additionally, the class outline view and code search capabilities let developers find variables, methods and properties easily, even in large-scale development projects.

Download the beta from Adobe Labs.