Adobe is working on quite a few tools to bring to the BlackBerry PlayBook along with other platforms. They have a dream to allow developers to create one codebase and share it across multiple device platforms while just tweaking the UI and interface for each device. It is what they are calling “One Tool. One Framework. One Codebase.” Right now this new Flash Builder 4.5 is only really tooled for Android devices but when it is released in the next 30 days it will be easy to target all three major tablet OS devices from one tool. You can then simply take the process from development to deployment including code signing from one place.
Their first steps in that direction have already been seen in the early builds previewed of Flash Builder 4.5 that developers are seeing for the PlayBook. Their vision seems to be a bit deeper and they showed off some cool development tools. For example, through the tool you can not only see how the app will look on different devices you can even use it to deploy a debug version to a PlayBook (they showed me an Android device since they didn’t have a PlayBook) and set breakpoints on the actual device. The second you end the debug session the app is removed. I wish all of RIM’s tools had features like this!
Adobe also announced today that they are working on a Photoshop SDK for tablets that will allow iOS at first and then the PlayBook and Android devices to interface with your desktop Photoshop. This new SDK is coming to iOS in early May with the PlayBook and other version following. The SDK will allow for apps that let you draw on the screen and import it in called Adobe Eazel. Another tool is Adobe Color Lava which lets you create custom color swatches and then their is Adobe Nav which lets you drive Photoshop tools from your tablet.
All in all it is cool to see Adobe has a vision for a mobile future instead of all the doom and gloom we are hearing about HTML5 replacing Flash. HTML5 definitely has its place but Adobe is not going down that easily. After hearing about all of this I plan on picking up the latest Flash Builder release that Adobe promised to send over. I will report back on how it works!
Check out the latest press release on Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 at this link
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