Well, today we finally received the message we were waiting so long for: Flash Builder 4 Beta released (Link)!

First of all to everybody who is wondering about „FLASH“-Builder 4, it’s not a typo, Adobe decided to use the Flash naming instead of continuing with Flex. Currently there are thousands of discussions in the web debating about Flash/Flex naming pros and cons - we simply think this was a stupid decission as the Flex seed just started to grow in the space of Java (enterprise) development, now there is a new seed which again needs to prove in this space and this, again, will take some time.

Flash Builder 4 focuses on three major topics:

• Design in Mind: providing a framework that supports a new degree of expressiveness, easily enabled with tools.
• Developer Productivity: improving compiler performance and adding productivity enhancements to language features like data binding.
• Framework Evolution: taking advantage of new Flash Player capabilities and adding features required by common use-cases.

Ok, but let’s get back to Flash Builder 4 - based on the Flex SDK 4 we were really looking forward to this release, since we were expecting boosting new features. After installation (we used the Eclipse plugin variant) Flash Builder 4 was up and running and we created our first app. Bute where have Adobe’s brilliant control adjustment features gone? Usually it was possible to create a nice screen with symmetric adjustment of controls based on this useful helper - now it seems it’s up to the developer’s eyes to adjust on his own...maybe there is a little option hidden somewhere, help is highly appreciated, otherwise I’m really afraid of my first Flex GUIs based on Flash Builder...

Control libraries pretty much look the same as Flex Builder 3 control libraries, as these were already covering a big bandwidth it was and still is a comfortable control set which enables developers to create their application straight forward without creating any „control workarounds“.

Finally we tried to setup a first BlazeDS enabled project, and as we are using Eclipse with Web Tools Platform plugin we wanted to create our BlazeDS app as usual and deploy the app to Tomcat. But that was exactly the point when we skipped all further Flash Builder 4 attempts, since the BlazeDS dialog does not show up and we had to integrated the libs and config on our own via copy & paste...

Ok, so the 2nd bullet point „Developer Productivity“ currently does not apply to the Beta version, as we were struggeling from one pain point to the next - we do not deny there is a lot of documentation around, and maybe sometimes reading this documentation can avoid these pitfalls, but we want to develop - so a smart two pager describing briefly how to sourround these pitfalls really would be great, Adobe!

Framework Evolution so far could not be proved. But we found some nice features such as „Execute Flex Unit Tests“, or several data binding menus indicate - something happened, or let’s say is in progress of happening...



Regarding designer/developer hand in hand development so far we can only say - something „big“ ships with Adobe Catalyst, and several screencasts demonstrated: if you are able to use these tools such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop you can easily produce magnificent GUIs - but always keep in mind, as a single developer you have to learn these frameworks/tools first, until then you better should use Fash Builder as starting point in stead of wasting too much time for design stuff...

Our conclusion regarding Flash Builder 4 Beta: it’s a pretty early Beta, sometimes we feel it’s better to release a stable Beta two weeks later instead of having thousands of developers banging their heads against walls...but that’s political and as we focus on technical facts here, let’s put it in a nutshell: several needful functions and features will ship with Flash Builder 4, but better wait until these features are supported at least 80% instead of trying to use them just for being the first one...