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Adobe Flash CS5 To Let Developers Author Apps for iPhone

Flash Professional CS5 will allow developers to build applications for Apple's iPhone. The forthcoming release of Adobe's multimedia authoring tool was unveiled Monday at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference, underway in Los Angeles this week.

With Flash Professional CS5, Flash developers will be able to build new applications for the iPhone or repurpose applications that had previously been built for the Web using ActionScript 3. The process simply involves exporting the project from Flash Pro to a native iPhone format (.ipa). There is no JIT or runtime interpretation for the finished application.

Applications developed within Flash CS5 will also be able to take advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer and multi-touch capabilities. Some examples of applications built for the iPhone using a pre-release version of Flash Pro CS5 are currently available through the App Store for download. (Further information about these can be found here.)

Support for iPhone app authoring isn't the only new feature coming to Flash CS5. Some others will include:

  • XML support for FLA files;
  • Improvements to the ActionScript editor;
  • Integration with Flash Builder;
  • New styling and layout control for text using Text Layout Framework; and
  • A new Code Snippets panel.

A preview version of Flash CS5 is expected to be available later this year. As of this writing, the final ship date and final pricing have not been announced.

Further information about Flash CS5 and its iPhone authoring capabilities, including a video demonstration, can be found on at the Adobe Labs site here.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


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