Adobe has a new exciting product out called Air. Air allows developers to create web applications that run on your desktop without the need of a web browser. Actually, they work as both desktop or in-browser applications. It is cross platform so you can write one set of code that will work for both Mac and PC (I’m not sure about Linux), and you can use Flash, Flex, HTML and Ajax to create your application. You can find some AIR applications here.
Adobe also released Flex 3.0 under the open-source Mozilla Public License. Flex has already been becoming more popular in the corporate world for RIA development and this should push it farther ahead. Also, Flex is supposed to have more accessibility (for example, working with screen readers), which is my biggest gripe with Flash and Flex applications, but I haven’t looked into it and I’ve seen a few complaints already.
Adobe announce another application in development called Thermo. Thermo works with Flex to allows easy integration of Photoshop items. Thermo should allow designers to create interactive Flex-based applications without coding and then giving those applications to the coders who can load the file directly into Flex Builder complete the development process.
