Macromedia Announces Flex 2 Product Line And Flash Player 8.5

MACROMEDIA ANNOUNCES FLEX 2 PRODUCT LINE AND FLASH PLAYER 8.5

New Eclipse-based tool to enable millions of application developers to build engaging and effective rich Internet applications with the Flash Platform

San Francisco, CA - October 6, 2005 - Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced the Macromedia Flex 2 product line and Macromedia Flash Player 8.5, the foundation for building effective rich Internet applications that blend the responsiveness of desktop software, the cross-platform reach of the web, and the breathtaking expressiveness of the Macromedia Flash Platform.

The new products are designed to span the full spectrum of rich Internet application scenarios, from e-commerce product configuration to visual trading applications that integrate with real-time data. Today’s announcement covers several major elements of the Flash Platform:

* Flash Player 8.5—the latest high-performance client runtime for rich Internet applications
* Flex Framework 2—the core programming model and component library for Flex
* Flex Builder 2—an all new Eclipse-based environment for developing rich Internet applications with the Flex Framework. Flex Builder 2, previously code-named Zorn, can incorporate rich media content from the recently released Macromedia Flash Professional 8, the leading authoring tool for creating rich interactive content.
* Flex Enterprise Services 2—essential data services, automated testing support, and an open adapter architecture for delivering data-intensive rich Internet applications and deeply integrating with enterprise service-oriented infrastructure
* Flex Charting Components 2—extensible components for advanced data visualization

"It is great to see the growing interest in rich Internet applications as organizations look for new ways to streamline customer engagement and internal processes," said David Mendels, general manager, Macromedia. "The Macromedia Flex 2 product line and Macromedia Flash Player 8.5 will enable millions of developers in organizations large and small to deliver cross-platform applications that will change the face of the Internet by bringing information to life."

Flash Player 8.5 adds industrial-strength programming power on top of the expressiveness introduced in Flash Player 8, creating a state-of-the-art, cross-platform runtime. It includes a new virtual machine that offers faster runtime performance, full runtime error reporting, improved debugging, and ActionScript 3. ActionScript 3 complies with the latest ECMAScript specifications, and increases developer productivity by making it easier to find and fix errors earlier. Flash Player is currently installed on over 600 million desktops and mobile devices globally, and new versions reach 80 percent of computers on the web in approximately 12 months.

Macromedia is also introducing a new tiered licensing model to bring the power of Flex development within reach of every professional application developer, while also offering value-added capabilities that scale to meet the needs of the most sophisticated enterprise projects. Flex Builder 2 will be sold for less than $1000 per developer and will include the ability to develop, compile, and deploy Flex applications that connect to XML and SOAP web services with no additional charges or server licensing required. Flex Enterprise Services 2 will be licensed on a per CPU, per project, and enterprise license basis to offer the development efficiency, performance, advanced integration capabilities, and testing support that advanced applications will require.

"Applications deployed by enterprises must increasingly meet divergent requirements across business-to-business and business-to-consumer scenarios, and must offer a rich user experience on the front end, while implementing, on the back end, a secure, maintainable connection to enterprise data and services," said Ray Valdes, analyst, Gartner. "Rich Internet application platforms based on mainstream IDEs that support connecting to enterprise services using service-oriented architectures can provide a good return on investment through enhanced agility, improved usability, and increased end-user productivity."

Alpha versions of Flex Builder 2 and Flash Player 8.5 are expected to be available for download on October 17 in conjunction with the MAX 2005 developer conference. The alpha version of Flex Enterprise Services 2 will be available later in the development cycle. All of these products are expected to be commercially available in the first half of calendar 2006. For more information, please visit: http://www.macromedia.com/go/flex2intro. To sign up to be notified when the public alpha of Flex 2 is available for download, please visit: http://www.macromedia.com/go/flex2notify.

:source: Source: http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia...l?promoid=CSLL