Adobe Previews Linux Version Of Flex Dev Tools

Posted on Adobe's Labs development portal, the alpha includes a subset of features from Adobe's under-development Flex 3, code-named "Moxie." It currently supports project creation, code coloring, code hints, compilation, Flex's Ajax Bridge and debugging.

After a stretch of frustrating Linux users by lagging on development for their platform, Adobe finally released Flash Player 9 for Linux this year, making good on its long-stated goal of treating Linux comparably to Microsoft's Windows operating system and Apple's Mac. Flex Builder Linux runs on SuSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu distributions.

Flex is Adobe's Eclipse-based development stack for building rich Internet applications, particularly those tied to other Adobe multimedia technologies like Flash. In April, Adobe announced plans to open source Flex, although it will not open-source its Flex Builder IDE. The Java source code, ActionScript debugger and ActionScript libraries that make up the core Flex framework will be released under the Mozilla Public License.

Adobe's Flex Builder Linux announcement came at its Max user conference, running this week in Chicago. The show has ushered in a flurry of new technology releases, including a preview of a new design tool, "Thermo," for creating Internet application user interfaces; a new, near-feature-complete Flex Builder 3 beta; and a second beta version of Adobe AIR, the company's ambitious new client runtime for bringing linking Web applications back to the desktop.