Well I’m pretty much flabbergasted. In one grand motion Adobe has rewritten the rules of Flash and given it a big boost in the world of web development.

The public release of the beta is awesome of course, and hopefully a lot of people will download it and check it out.

But the bigger news is that there will be a free version of the Flex SDK that will include everything you need to create applications in Flex. Combine that with the fact it will be easy to share your code with others via the “View Source” button in Flash and all of a sudden the Flash Platform is within reach of everyone.

I’m not sure who was behind the move, but you did something amazing. I love the web, I love web applications, and Flashers create some amazing examples. But it’s been prohibitively expensive for too long. Now the creative, talented guys at smaller companies and startups all over the globe will be able to buy into the platform.

With Flash Player penetration soaring, and the cost of developing Flex applications reduced to nil, we’re going to see some killer Web 2.0 apps done in Flash. ADBE – good move. The web platform just got a whole lot richer.

Tomorrow head on over to Adobe Labs to download a beta copy of Flex Builder 2. You’ll never go back.

John Dowdell kind of dominates the roundup this week but I think all in all it’s been a big week with a lot of news and info.

On Tuesday, Scoble posted about the Sparkle team releasing a CTP version of their tool. John had a good write up with some good comments here. I also liked the write-up over at Pixelfumes.

On Wednesday, we got news that Flash Media Server 2.01 was going to be released with a licensing scheme that will allow for a developer edition. If you’re interested in FMS (and you should be) this is great news. FlashComGuru had the scoop.

There were also a couple of interesting posts I wanted to bring attention to. One was on Monday by Alexandru talking about why Ruby websites are always successful. I think he makes a great point. One thing that really builds hype about a technology and puts it in the public eye is a killer app. When you have tons and tons of smart people working together to build an application with their technology, you’re going to get a lot of killer apps. Hopefully Flex 2 will have some killer apps soon after its release. It certainly has the potential.

The other post was over at Turdhead.com about Flash and web standards. While I believe that web standards have a place on the web, and I support them, Flash does bring some important advancements. It’s not good to use Flash for everything, but it does do many things exceptionally well. Presentation across browsers and platforms is one of those things. JD also chimed in and it’s worth the read.

On Wednesday (and again on Thursday) JD called out the MXNA/Adobe community and implored everyone to talk to people outside the bubble about Flex 2 and what it can do. He went more in depth in a later post and talked more about why he wanted word to spread. He also hinted at a public beta release very soon. Everyone who reads me knows how important I think getting the word out is. My zeal probably goes overboard sometimes, but I think Flex 2 is a great product, and I think it lacks only exposure. Once we get it over the exposure hump, the Flash Platform will explode. It’s just too awesome.

Last, Jesse Warden presented on the Flex public alpha to the Atlanta Macromedia User Group last night. I haven’t heard how it went, but I’m anxious for Jesse to post his slides and/or code.

That’s about it. Hopefully next week we’ll see the Flex 2 public beta, so start telling people about it.

John Dowdell’s post on Sparkle yesterday got me thinking about how Sparkle fits into the general scheme of things. His request for comments was intriguing: “I’m not interested in deathmatch comments on this item, but am interested in how you see the technologies and their actual audiences, thanks.”

I’m as guilty as anyone of having a “Flash Platform against the World” mentality. Part of that stems from the fact that I’m frustrated by a lack of awareness across the wider developer community that Flash has grown up. When announcements like the one yesterday happen, Flex rarely gets a mention as an alternative and there also seems to be little discussion of Flash as a development platform in the technology space as a whole.

Now with that said, I now realize Sparkle and Flex are not direct competitors (deathmatch style), but they are competing in the same space.

I’d say that in general, Adobe/Macromedia has very much focused on designers. Now they’re starting to branch out and attract more developer types while still staying true to their roots. Flex 2 is the first example of that effort. It provides designers a great tool that allows them to create more powerful applications than in the past. It provides developers a tool that can give them some extra polish and design, but still stays true to their programmatic mindset.

Sparkle is the result of the reverse effort. Microsoft has always been strong on developers, and Visual Studio is an awesome IDE. With Sparkle, they’re trying to give their developers a tool that will whet their designer appetites and let them easily create great looking interfaces. At the same time, they’re trying to reach out to designers and give them some of the power of Visual Studio while still allowing them to use their design skills.

So while I agree that this is not a deathmatch scenario, and Sparkle is not going to ever be a “Flash killer” they are targeting the same audience. It will be interesting to see both how big that audience, the half-developer-half-designer, ends up being, and also what tools they gravitate towards.

Robert Scoble has posted a Sparkle video on Channel 9 and announced that Sparkle has released a public beta. He also asks what we think.

Well Scoble, I think you’re chasing a market you can’t win. Sparkle not only has to be good, but it has to differentiate itself, and now that Macromedia and Adobe have joined, they really are a behemoth in the design space. But they aren’t getting bogged down by their size. They’re going to take the synergies of the two companies and create some great tools.

Microsoft will always be playing catch-up because designers trust the Adobe name, they have years of experience in the design space, and their innovation in the space is second to none. Being able to combine the Flash Platform with powerful Adobe tools is going to give designers a medium that extends across all platforms.

Sparkle just doesn’t really bring anything new to the space. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary. The team says there isn’t anything like this tool out there, but that’s not true. Flex Builder provides all of the functionality that Sparkle does, with the addition that the language to extend it, ActionScript, is well known not only by developers but by designers.

Competition is always good, and I think the Flex team will step it up and we’ll get an even better product because of Sparkle, but they have a big head start, a better tool, and a larger developer community.