Oh for heaven’s sake. I LIKE the name “Flex” but Adobe have decided, for
marketing reasons no doubt, that “Flex Builder” must become “Flash
Builder” when version 4 is released later this year.
On the one hand, this might seem to make sense because Flex does, after
all, target the Flash Player. On the other hand, however, Flex has
different capabilities to Flash and is a completely different animal.
You won’t see many animations created using “Flash Builder” since it is
aimed at Rich Internet Application development.
So, there will shortly be three “Flash” products:
Flash Professional: this is the tool we all think of as Flash
Flash Builder: Flex
Flash Catalyst: sort of like Microsoft Expression Blend in that it
enables designers to create interfaces and partially working
applications that can then be finished (or repaired or chucked away and
started again) by the poor developer.
Flash Builder and Catalyst are now available as betas from Adobe Labs
(http://labs.adobe.com) . If you’re an existing Flex user, you will get
a serial number to extend your beta beyond the default 30 day period.
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