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.

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/

It's not dead (or even dying), it's just...
Not dead, just ... stealthy
Not dead, just ... getting the AJAX treatment
Not dead, just ... in an upgrade cycle

Read more at a new ComputerWorld rectifying story.

Thermo is amazing! It will bridge the gap between designers and developers, allowing developers to get in the game at an earlier stage; allow customers to feel the application and not just see it in planning phase... Prototyping just upgraded to a whole new meaning. The customer doesn't know what he wants until he sees it; now this applies to RIAs as well, how nice is that?! I really can't wait to start using it.
You read about it on the blogs, but there's nothing like seeing it in action ... even on early stages, I can already visualize us being an early adopted and using it on every RIA project.

Without getting too deep into the demo, Thermo allows to create a new RIA project, spits out Flex code... allow designers to use familiar tools such as layers ... or you can import a PSD, separate all assets, convert graphics into controls, group data into arrays for dummy data.... it's amazing ...

Max is huge! The hotel is huge, the conference center is huge, the attendance is huge ... Amazing conference ... kudos to Adobe for putting this together.

There is more ColdFusion emphasis that I expected, which is great.

The opening keynote was impressive; first of all, feating 5000 people in a single room is impressive... then speaking for 2.5h, go Kevin! One of the most impressive demos was 1080p HD Flash Video using h.264...

Afterwards, for a change, I didn't attend any session, but the networking was worth it ...

Tomorrow I have my ColdFusion Powered Ajax session and then I may attend a few others...

Will post more tomorrow.

Oh yes, the Adobe Media Player has potential! More on that later too.

Announcements: AIR Beta 2 available. Flex 3 Beta 2 Available. AIR Beta 3 will incorporate h.264. Flash 10 / Astro will incorporate Text Rendering API. Flash 10 / Astro will incorporate 3d capabilities, such as rotateX,Y,Z. Adobe Media Player has tons of monetizing opportunities through Ad Capabilities. ColdFusion 9 will allow server side ActionScript 3.

Leaving to Max. My session will be ...... >take a guess< ............ ColdFusion Powered Ajax, where I will demonstrate ColdFusion MX8's capabilities, but also talk about the engine powering it -- YUI, EXT --, provide examples on how to tweak it, improve performance, and show some amazing examples of Ext 2.0, which has not been confirmed to be part of a future release of ColdFusion, but we can only hope.

Apollo is now called AIR... note, not Adobe AIR, just AIR .... AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime, so you don't want to call it Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime. You can get the beta from Adobe Labs.

Adobe Article on Six Must-See AIR Sample Applications

Aptana IDE (or Eclipse Plugin) new supports AIR.

• AIR Project contains all necessary files for out-of-the box launching of AIR applications
• Export wizard for bundling and deploying AIR applications
• Easy import of Ajax libraries into Adobe AIR projects
• Integrated content assist for AIR SDK
• Help and online documentation

I know it's been in the blogsphere for a few days, but if you missed it, ColdFusion 8 Public Beta is Live on Labs; it will let you develop next-generation Internet experiences faster and more easily than ever before. Here are just a few of the key features that you'll discover in the public beta:

• Significant performance improvements - up to 5Xfaster than ColdFusion MX7.
• Server monitoring identifies server bottlenecks, allowing for tuning and improved performance.
• Code debugging speeds your development with set breakpoints, variables monitoring, and step through ColdFusion code with an Eclipse plug-in debugger.
• Integration with Adobe Flex(tm) and AJAX features let ColdFusion power personalized, multimedia-rich applications to enhance your users' experiences on the web.
• High-quality, on-demand presentations can be created dynamically on the server.
• Applications can interact with PDF documents and forms for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.
• Create and manipulate images with more than 50 new CFML tags and functions
• Native support for .NET objects to easily integrate all of your enterprise data and infrastructure services.
• Server-side printing

Reminder: Adobe's Scorpio Spring Tour is coming to town today, so don't miss it! This is your one chance to catch the official pre-release demo of all the cool new features coming up with ColdFusion 8. Among the features to be presented tonight, you may expect to see: [source]

1. Built in AJAX widgets. Create AJAX windows, auto complete forms, calendar popups, grids, WYSIWYG editors, and much more. All using simple ColdFusion based tags and generating industry standard solutions such as Prototype and Yahoo User Interface Javascript.
   
2. Native JSON support. ColdFusion components now know if they are called by a web browser and will return JSON formated data automatically. You can also create JSON packets directly or consume them and turn them into native ColdFusion objects.
3. .NET (and Java!) integration. Pull in .NET objects and use them like native ColdFusion objects. Combine .NET and Java on the same page if you like. Easily the best web based middleware solution.
4. Microsoft Exchange integration. Love it or hate it, most organizations use Exchange religiously. Now you can read and update email, calendars, tasks and much more. No change to the Exchange server is required.
5. Flash based presentation builder. Combine HTML, Audio, Flash Movies, Images, and CFCharts to create spiffy flash based presentations on the fly. Just wrap your existing pages in CFPRESENTATION and you are on your way.
6. Full PDF integration. Create, combine, update, and interact with PDF files using CFPDF and CFPDFFORM tags.
7. Native image manipulation functions. Blur, sharpen, draw, rotate, stream to browser, and much much more. This finally brings ColdFusion's image support in line with PHP and other frameworks while keeping it so simple that even I could use it.
8. Across the board enhancements. Improvements in security, speed, Flash Forms, Report Builder, and more.
9. Administration API. Now you can access, audit, and snapshot all the information the server knows about itself. No longer is ColdFusion a black box. Audit long running processes, most frequently run queries, and bottle necks. SnapShot the server before making your change or doing a reset so that you can analyze potential problems later.

Adobe Apollo Camp Videos are now available at labs. For those of you who interested in RDA [Rich Desktop Applications, just made this term up :) ] and couldn't make it to the free sessions, you can now catch the highlights.