Monday, 6 June 2005

Macromedia Aligns with Eclipse

In a bid to get Java developers writing Flash applications, Macromedia is throwing its weight behind the Eclipse programming system. Eclipse is an open-source "integrated development environment," or IDE, which provides application developers with programming tools and reusable components. While based on Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Eclipse can be used to create applications in formats competitive with Java, including Flash.

Macromedia said it will join the Eclipse Foundation and create a "next-generation rich Internet application development tool," code-named Zorn, based on Eclipse. "This is a big move for us because we've always used our own tools," said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect. "Now we're adopting an open-source approach to build a new tool. It's important for the Flash platform because there's a growing community of developers adopting Eclipse and we would like to enable developers for the Flash platform to take advantage of it."