After a summer working long hours on micro sites for clients of the advertising agency Digitas in NYC followed by a super car and hiking trip through the US Midwest (videos) for a few weeks and some “retirement” time off, I am back in the tech seat. So I saw this a while ago, but I reluctant to get glued into my PC for too much during my break.
At MAX 2007 Chicago video cameras were rolling to show Adobe’s new direction with Flash/Flex/AIR development. It is code named Astro. What we see now Flash 10 and Astro are the same.
Here is one YouTube links you can see for yourself.
As well you can follow the progress of Astro at this link at Adobe Labs.
One impressive item was the attempt to allow designers create local test data that normally would server from the internet. This will extend designers further into the development and design cycle without the need to code.
3D is starting to show up in the Flash Player. Right now it is called 3D effects. Not sure how limiting that term is but there is an indication of an API for 3D.
More image processing functionality under the name Hydra that allows custom image filters and effects. Sounds like fun for the showy needs.
There is no beta as of this writing.