Adobe wants to bridge gap between PCs and cloud | Business Tech - CNET News

A timely snapshot – excerpt (see the full article for more details):

Adobe will be touting new AIR and Flash tools at the show, too, though only in "technology preview" form:

• Alchemy, to be shown Tuesday, lets programs written in the C or C++ languages, run within Flash Player. That could help companies repurposing in-house software.

• "Gumbo," a new version of Adobe Flex Builder, is designed to make programming easier for those familiar with scripting languages such as PHP, Turner said.

• "Thermo," formally called Adobe Flash Catalyst, is designed to let people quickly create an application's interface in another application--by Adobe Illustrator CS4 for example--then add the interactive instructions to the interface elements.

Flash and Flex have rivals, though. Most obvious is Microsoft's Silverlight, which has begun to spread, and which has the advantage of compatibility with the .Net programming environment and language many Windows programmers already are familiar with.

Adobe is aware of the Silverlight threat, though. For example, When Microsoft started touting its high-definition video support, Adobe put the Flash Player 10 development on hold, added the feature to Flash Player 9 to answer Microsoft more quickly, then resumed development of version 10, [Adobe CTO Kevin] Lynch said.

It’ll be interesting to see how Adobe’s “client and cloud” compares with Microsoft’s “software + services”

Adobe wants to bridge gap between PCs and cloud | Business Tech - CNET News