Macromedia Relaunches Flash as a Platform

In a move that is being received with a smile by the open-source-friendly segment of the Flash development community, Macromedia announced that they will be joining the Eclipse Foundation to create a "next-generation rich Internet application development tool," codenamed Zorn and based on Eclipse. Further more, Macromedia launched a new website and a series of whitepapers forecasting the future of the Flash Platform.

For many of us, the idea of Flash as a viable development platform for RIAs has been a reality for some time. Now, Macromedia is putting it in black-and-white. Built around the strenghts of the Flash Player, Macromedia has built a universe of development tools, server-side technologies, solutions and partnerships that affect directly the way we do business. With what is being announced for Maelstrom (Flash Player 8), Macromedia has proved again that they listen to the community. Some of the stuff coming in the next generation of the Flash player, according to today's announcements:

- File upload and download
- Support for GIF, PNG and Progressive JPEG image formats
- Better font readability
- Enhanced Video codecs

All of this, together with the ability of developing Flash applications within an open-source environment such as Eclipse, which has been embraced by an important segment of the Flash community, is enough to have everybody happy and waiting to see what else will come after Maelstrom is released.