Gumbo (Flex 4) goes beta

Adobe has just released a beta version of Gumbo, the next version of Flex. Gumbo is being developed around three primary themes:

Design in Mind

provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer

Developer Productivity

improve compiler performance and add productivity enhancements to language features like data binding

Framework Evolution

take advantage of new Flash Player capabilities and add features required by common use-cases

Improvements include :

• enhanced states syntax
• revamped component architecture
• FXG : Adobe’s new graphics interchange format. "FXG is a defined subset of MXML...Most skin classes in the Gumbo framework are MXML documents which primarily use FXG tags to describe the visual appearance of Gumbo components."

These improvements are at least in part aimed at laying a foundation for integration with Thermo; a new designer focussed tool aiming to simplify the workflow from design to finished application.

For a good overview of Gumbo you should take a look at Matt Chotin's presentation. ScaleNine has a good summary of the design related changes and Ely Greenfileds video (below) provides an excellent introduction to skinning components using FXG.