Adobe has earlier this month announced new tooling advancements aligned towards mobile application development as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 release. The latest offerings include new tooling and framework support in Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 for developing, testing, and deploying mobile applications on Android, Blackberry Tablet OS, and iOS platforms.
The company says that this new approach enables developers to leverage a single tool chain, as well as a single programming language and code base to create what it calls "expressive applications" across mobile platforms, with improved performance while reducing development time and cost of delivery.
Adobe describes the latest iteration of Flash Builder 4.5 as a product that has been built to accelerate the development of Flex and ActionScript projects, including new round-trip workflows with Adobe Flash Catalyst CS 5.5 — and this allows designers and developers to work in parallel throughout application development.
"With these releases, developers for the first time have a single development platform for building highly expressive web, mobile, and desktop applications, marking a leap forward for mobile app development," said Ed Rowe, vice president of development tooling at Adobe.
"With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, enterprises now need to ensure that their applications work seamlessly across many different types of devices. Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 will now allow companies to standardize on a common platform capable of delivering rich and consistent application experiences that perform great across Android, Blackberry Tablet OS and iOS devices," he added.
NOTE: Android support is available today. Flex support for Blackberry Tablet OS and iOS are expected to be available June 2011.
According to Adobe's website, updates to the Flex framework will enable developers to reuse most or all of their code across applications that target multiple platforms. "Moving an application across different mobile platforms is often as simple as a recompile," says the company.
New components expand the Spark skinning and component architecture introduced in Flex 4 while enhancements in Flash Builder 4.5 accelerate coding for Flex and ActionScript projects with best practice code templates, code completion, and code generation features.
The new mobile development features in Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 are targeted at creating standalone installed applications using Adobe AIR 2.6 for mobile devices. In addition to Google Marketplace, Blackberry AppWorld, and Apple's iTunes AppStore, mobile apps can now be deployed to the Amazon Appstore for Android providing companies with additional monetization options.
