This week saw a Flex refresh, JavaScript's jump to light speed, a comment battle on Flex and Silverlight, a look at Project Nile, and some great tips on getting started with Silverlight.

FEATURED: Flex SDK 3.1 and FlexBuilder 3.0.1

This week brought the release of the next iteration of the Flex SDK as well as an update to FlexBuilder. The new SDK milestone build has bug fixes, support for AIR 1.1 and Beta support for Flash Player 10. The new version of Flex Builder plug-in supports Eclipse 3.4 and includes several bug fixes.

Adobe Flex Developer Center: Introducing Flex SDK 3.1 and Flex Builder 3.0.1

Mike Chambers: Flex SDK 3.1 and Flex Builder 3.0.1 Updates : Support for AIR 1.1

Adobe OpenSource: Download Flex 3.1 SDK

Lightspeed JavaScript with TraceMonkey

Mozilla pulled back the curtain on the next evolution of SpiderMonkey which is named TraceMonkey. The results are astounding and Brendan Eich had some great benchmarking results. If this continues to play out, this will mean new doors opening for AJAX due to the increased performance.

Ajaxian: JavaScript JIT: The Dream Gets Closer (in Firefox)

Brendan Eich: TraceMonkey: JavaScript Lightspeed

Mozilla Wiki: TraceMokey

Flex vs. Silverlight

Mike Kavis wrote a good comparison of Flex and Silverlight this week at the Information Technology Toolbox. The article compared many aspects of the two platforms, but be sure to check out the comments from such guys as Mike Chambers (Adobe) and Scott Barnes (Microsoft). The comments alone are about another four blog posts.

Information Technology Toolbox: The Battle for the RIA Throne: Flex vs. Silverlight

Getting Started with Silverlight

The Silverlight Guru Jesse Liberty posted a great article on how to get started developing applications with Microsoft Silverlight. If you haven't yet started to develop in Silverlight, this article will be a great resource.

Jesse Liberty: A Personal Guide to Getting Started with Silverlight

Introduction to JavaFX Project Nile

While much has been made of building application with the recent JavaFX Preview SDK, the graphical tools included with this download have been a bit neglected. Jeff Hoffman does a great job of remedying this problem by producing a screencast that will introduce you to these plugins.

Jeff Hoffman: JavaFX Project Nile Screencast

Curl Online Training

This week Curl released a free online video training series. This series covers language fundamentals, the visual layout editor, and application development.

Curl.com: Curl Releases New Web-Based Training Courses

InsideRIA.com: Curl's Web Based Training is Free

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