Adobe announced several advancements to its Flash platform, including new Flash offerings and the availability of a new version of Adobe AIR at its annual MAX user conference in San Francisco. Furthermore, Adobe also opens up its cloud initiative, known as Cocomo, as a public beta.

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe, told the media: “Our goal with Flash is to enable users to create rich, immersive applications.” The next version of the company’s Flex Builder, codenamed “Gumbo”, and the preview of Adobe Flash Catalyst, formerly known as “Thermo” were also announced. The Thermo design tool is used for creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding.

In addition, the Flash Catalyst enables artwork created in Adobe Creative Suite 4 to be imported and converted into components such as buttons, scrollbars or input fields. Adobe said it has named the product Flash Catalyst because it catalyzes the effort for design and development to allow designers and developers to work more closely.

Another improvement from Adobe refers to the availability of Adobe AIR 1.5, which is a core component of the Adobe Flash Platform and enables developers to deliver rich Internet applications outside the browser.

Furthermore, the new version includes open source WebKit engine and accelerates application performance using “SquirrelFish”, the new WebKit JavaScript interpreter. Among other enhancements, AIR 1.5 includes an encrypted database that meets enterprise security compliance requirements, custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation and extensible rich text layout. The product is available immediately as a free download for Windows and Mac, and AIR 1.5 for Linux is expected to be available before the end of the year.

As for the Flash Player 10, Adobe announced its release in October and it announces a pre-release of the 64-bit Linux version of Flash Player 10, available on AdobeLabs. Furthermore, Adobe demonstrated a preview of Flash Player 10 for smartphones which features the latest advancements related to the Open Screen Project. Adobe Flash Platform innovations are at the core of the Open Screen Project, which is an industry-wide initiative to deliver rich multiscreen experience built on a runtime environment for open Web browsing and applications across PCs, cell phones and consumer electronics.

Adobe’s cloud-based platform-as-a-service-tool, Cocomo, will allow developers add real-time social capabilities to web applications. Using a combination of Cocomo and Flex, Adobe will be able to add collaboration features such as chat, audio and video to existing applications.

Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management for Adobe’s Business Productivity Business Unit, told the media: “In releasing Cocomo, we are making another leap forward towards enabling developers to deliver rich internet applications powered by Adobe platform technologies.” However, Microsoft’s Silverlight still counts a big advantage over Flash and Flex, having compatibility with the .Net programming environment and language.