Roughly 15 months after releasing Flex Builder 3.0, Adobe is working towards a revision with a beta release of the slightly renamed Flash Builder 4.0. The name change was announced a few weeks back. From the press release:
...the new IDE improves basic development functionality, adds significant new data-centric development features, and streamlines the design-develop workflow. New data-centric development features allow developers to introspect services and use a simple drag and drop approach to quickly bind methods to user interface components, such as interactive charts, graphs, and data grids. These features make it easier to break down information silos and integrate business data from databases and Web services across different organizations. As a result, companies can build user-centric applications for dashboards, e-commerce and self- service Web portals that streamline business processes for their employees, customers and partners...
Other features added to Flash Builder 4 include:
- Template support
- Event handler generation
- Getter/setter generation
- ASDoc tooltips
- States-based code view
- Package explorer
- FlexUnit testing
- Command-line build
Today also marks the beta release of the Flex 4 framework with an estimated final release in Q4 of 2009. InfoQ's Jon Rose provides an overview of the top 10 new features in Flex 4.
Finally, Adobe is also releasing the first beta of their new Flash Catalyst tool:
...Adobe Flash Catalyst, a new tool in the Adobe Flash Platform, turns interaction design from a development task into a design discipline. It allows designers to transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® or Adobe Illustrator® software into user interfaces that can then be utilized directly by developers to complete the application or site. This improved workflow allows designers to maintain control of the user experience while developers can stay focused on core application logic...
Catalyst includes support for importing Photoshop and Illustrator native files with layers along with roundtrip editing. Projects created in Catalyst can also be imported and extended using Flash Builder. Adobe's Ryan Stewart has further details including links to a number of resources and a Flash Catalyst screencast.