Flex/AIR on the Adobe.com home page:
http://www.adobe.com/

Flex Builder 3:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Adobe AIR:
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Flex 3 SDK:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3email

New Rich Internet Applications site:
http://www.adobe.com/resources/business/rich_internet_apps/

Re-launched Adobe Open Source Website:
http://opensource.adobe.com/

Join the Maine Flash Platform User Group for this "can't miss" meeting! Adobe announced the immediate availability of Flex 3 and AIR today.

Adobe's RIA technologies enable you to rapidly build and deploy the most engaging applications across browsers and on the desktop. The Maine Flash Platform User Group is hosting a special live event to share exciting new information on Adobe's platform tools and technologies for building RIAs. You'll see an exclusive user group video presentation by Adobe Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, hear some important product news, plus get your hands on some exclusive schwag and other giveaways. We have a free copy of Flex Builder 3 to raffle, as well as a Sony Playstation Portable (Star Wars Edition), and some other cool things. There are even some limited edition t-shirts!

We will also roll the dice to see if we'll give away a big software package from Adobe.

Be part of the fun and excitement and join the rest of the Adobe developer community by participating in this very special event.

Bring along some friends! If we have 50 or more in attendance, Adobe will provide an additional (and VERY nice) item to raffle.

Monday, February 25 at 6:00pm at the offices of Penobscot Bay Media, LLC, in Camden, Maine.

This meeting will take the place of our meeting in March. Hope to see you there.

Adobe released the public beta of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) early this morning. AIR is the release name for the project code-named Apollo.

AIR is a cross-platform runtime environment for SWF (Flash or Flex), HTML and Javascript, and PDF integration. The general idea behind AIR is to leverage Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) from the desktop and allow for better integration with the client environment. Some of the features included in the public beta are: - Transparent HTML application support - Windowing API improvements - Native File Pickers / Browsers - Server / Service Connectivity API - Native Menuing API - Drag and Drop - Clipboard Support - Embedded database - File type/extension registration

For more information, see Adobe Labs

Adobe has also announced a contest for AIR devlopers, with some excellent prizes: http://labs.adobe.com/showcase/special/airderby/

We will be discussing AIR at our meeting tomorrow evening (June 12). Hope to see you there.

BTW the latest hubbub is that AIR is RIA backwards -- pretty tricky, Adobe.

I just heard that Adobe will be releasing the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3 on Adobe Labs next week.

The Kit enables the compiling of Flash content into SWCs to be used within Flex projects. The overhead involved is only around 14K.

To use, create a movie clip. Publish using the command in the Kit. Frame labels become States within Flex. Special frame labels become tranistions. Events and sizing are also handled pretty smoothly.

Can't wait to get my hands on it!

This just in:

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Standard will begin shipping in April 2007.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection for Mac OS X on Intel-based systems and for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms will begin shipping worldwide in the third quarter of 2007.