This week saw Google unveiling its Chrome, Project Rosetta calling to Flash developers, Adobe announcing the CS4 unveiling webcast, Flash video powering Amazon and the NFL, and much more...

FEATURED: Google Chrome Released

The biggest news of the week was Google's entry into the browser world. While this affects most every RIA platform, it has specific impact on the future of AJAX as Chrome supports a new breed of JavaScript Virtual Machine, V8. The initial beta version released by Google, is currently Windows-only, but a Mac and Linux version are said to be in development.

Google Chrome

Google: Google Chrome Comic

Platform Reactions

Many developers were curious about how Chrome would affect the future of their specific RIA platform. Shawn Wildermuth provided some good information for Silverlight and Ryan Stewart gave some good information for Flex and AIR developers.

Shawn Wildermuth: Silverlight 2 and Google Chrome

Ryan Stewart (Adobe): Thinking about Google Chrome from a Flash/AIR Perspective

Adobe Announces CS4 Unveiling Date

Adobe announced that the next version of the Creative Suite will be unveiled in a webcast on September 23rd. This will include the new version of the Flash IDE.

Lee Brimelow (Adobe): Adobe will announce CS4 on September 23rd

Adobe: Register for CS4 Webcast

Microsoft Releases Silverlight Tools for Flash Developers

Tim Heuer pointed out a new Microsoft site, Project Rosetta, that is designed to help developers from other technologies learn Silverlight. The first main focus of this site is providing resources for existing Flash developers to jump into Silverlight.

Tim Heuer (Microsoft): Silverlight resources for Flash developers

Project Rosetta: From Flash to Silverlight

The Flash and Silverlight Video War - Part 2

As we previously mentioned, Silverlight video has received quite a bit of coverage with both the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention. However, Flash video has received quite a bit of coverage this week for two separate launches.

First, Amazon, launched the new Amazon Video on Demand service which is powered by Flash. This new video service expands their original service which only was available to Windows users.

Second, NBC is streaming quite a bit of content for Sunday Night Football through the Flash Player. All of this will be powered by Adobe's Flash Media Server, and it will include multiple types of media the user can interact with including five live video streams.

Amazon Video On Demand

NewTeeVee.com: Amazon Adds Streaming for Both PCs and Macs

Adobe Press Release: NFL Teams Up with Adobe to Deliver NBC Sunday Night Football Live on the Internet

NBC NFL Sunday Night Football Extra

ColdFusion Free for Educational Use

As they did previously with Flex Builder 3 Professional, Adobe ColdFusion 8 is now free for educational use.

Kristen Schofield (Adobe): ColdFusion 8 Now Available to Students and Educators for Free

ColdFusion 8 for Education

OpenLaszlo 4.2 Beta 1 Released

This week OpenLaszlo 4.2 transitioned from an alpha release to the first beta release. This version fixes a number of issues and adds support for several new items.

OpenLaszlo: OpenLaszlo 4.2 Beta 1 Now available

Work with Flex in Netbeans

While a majority of Flex developers are using Adobe's Flex Builder IDE, many developers are excited to Flex development expand to other IDE's. Recently, a Flex extension for IntelliJ was released, and now a plugin for NetBeans is in development. While there is just an early release, it brings true Flex support in Netbeans one step closer.

SourceForge: FlexBean