so beta 1 is out the door, downloadable from labs.macromedia.com

beta 1 is a huge milestone; it combines the flex 2 framework, flash player 8.5, actionscript 3.0 and flex builder 2. this gives you everything you need to start creating rich internet applications that will run on everything that player 8.5 runs on(mac and windows currently).

in case you don’t know, flex 2 is a framework for creating rich internet applications,very similar to ajax or microsoft’s forthcoming sparkle. there a a few key differences though. most notably, flex 2 can run anywhere, regardless of browser (unlike ajax applications, which only work on newer browsers) or platform(unlike sparkle applications, which are windows XP/vista only) and it has a great ide in flex builder 2 (something severely lacking in ajax, unless ibm has their way).

speaking of flex builder 2, i’m an engineer on this eclipse-based editor, and i’ll use this blog to reflect on the development effort, talk about features, the flex 2 platform and the world of web 2.0.

so, go download flex 2 beta and start building amazing things. if you’re not convinced, here’s a few videos that might spark your interest. heidi’s videos provide a great overview of flex builder, and my video shows off the great coding features that we’ve put into flex builder. go watch and go download!