Flash Player 8.5, announced by Macromedia today, adds industrial strength programming power on top of the expressiveness already introduced in Flash Player 8, creating what the company calls "a state-of-the-art, cross-platform runtime." It includes a new virtual machine that offers faster runtime performance, full runtime error reporting, improved debugging, and ActionScript 3.

The alpha versions of Flash Player 8.5 is expected to be available for download on October 17 in conjunction with the MAX 2005 developer conference.

"The Macromedia Flex 2 product line and Macromedia Flash Player 8.5 will enable millions of developers in organizations large and small to deliver cross-platform applications that will change the face of the Internet by bringing information to life," said David Mendels (pictured), general manager, Macromedia.

ActionScript 3 complies with the latest ECMAScript specifications, Mendels npted, and increases developer productivity by making it easier to find and fix errors earlier. Flash Player is currently installed on over 600 million desktops and mobile devices globally, and new versions reach 80 percent of computers on the web in approximately 12 months.

Other new products were unveiled today by Macromedia designed to span the full spectrum of rich Internet application scenarios, from e-commerce product configuration to visual trading applications that integrate with real-time data:

• Flex Framework 2 - the core programming model and component library for Flex
• Flex Builder 2 – an all new Eclipse-based environment for developing rich Internet applications with the Flex Framework. Flex Builder 2, previously code-named Zorn, can incorporate rich media content from the recently released Macromedia Flash Professional 8, the leading authoring tool for creating rich interactive content.
• Flex Enterprise Services 2 - essential data services, automated testing support, and an open adapter architecture for delivering data-intensive rich Internet applications and deeply integrating with enterprise service-oriented infrastructure
• Flex Charting Components 2 - extensible components for advanced data visualization

"It is great to see the growing interest in rich Internet applications as organizations look for new ways to streamline customer engagement and internal processes," Mendels said.