In collaboration with Adobe, one of the key additions in Ext 2.0.2 was Adobe AIR 1.0 support for running in the application sandbox. Also, the Simple Tasks AIR application sample was rewritten to take advantage of more of the native functionality in AIR and gained some cool custom Ext components that can be used outside of AIR.

Ext 2.0.2 does a great job wrapping some of the AIR API JavaScript functionality ... check out this blog entry for more.

Dan Vega has been working on ColdFusion custom tag wrappers for EXT, and let me tell you, it looks pretty amazing.

Ext is an EXTremely powerful JavaScript library which I mostly use to develop RIA and heavy desktop-like applications. However, CF8 ships with YUI and EXT for all dhtml and Ajax behind the scenes, so you see where this is going ... There's no easy way to upgrade the Ext version shipped with CF8, and Ext 2.0 has so many more features and improvements...

So check out Dan's cfext at RiaForge or some examples on his blog: forms, layouts, ...
 

Following the release of Adobe AIR, ichameleon/group/, has been working with Adobe and the New York Times on a small AIR demonstration app called ShifD: an  awesome little app that helps you organize your notes and see them online, your mobile phone, iphone app, or the AIR based desktop app.  The Adobe Air app was written entirely in AJAX using jQuery and a custom made MVC framework, wrapped around the Adobe AIR shell.  You can signup for an account at http://www.shifd.com and/or download free tools at http://www.shifd.com/tools/.

Important: You must use jquery 1.2.3+ with AIR 1.0. Previous versions have application sandbox issues.

This launched along with Adobe AIR, which will allow us to take our html/flash/flex applications to the desktop. In fact, Adobe announced that Adobe AIR, Flex Builder 3, and the Flex 3 SDK are now live on their website.

Related links:

Flex/AIR on the Adobe.com home page:
http://www.adobe.com/

Flex Builder 3
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Adobe AIR
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Flex 3 SDK
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3email

New Rich Internet Applications site
http://www.adobe.com/resources/business/rich_internet_apps/

Re-launched Adobe Open Source Website
http://opensource.adobe.com/