Adobe in a strategic deal with Salesforce.com has put out a jointly developed, Eclipse-based Flash Builder for Force.com IDE - well, at least a developer preview - integrating their two platforms in the name of greater developer productivity in creating what they claim will be a "new generation" of rich Internet applications (RIAs) in the cloud - and some mumble about bringing the richness of the consumer web to enterprise cloud apps.

Final delivery isn't scheduled until sometime in the first half of 2010. Meantime, see http://developer.force.com/flashbuilder where it warns against using the widgetry, which includes a beta version of Flash Builder 4 Premium, to build for production applications. No notion of pricing yet.

Adobe, which is competing against Microsoft's Silverlight, says the partnership "has opened up a significant opportunity to tightly integrate our platforms for the development and delivery of rich, highly productive business applications that can be quickly deployed in the cloud, adapted and scaled as the business changes and grows."

Developers can use the new integrated development environment (IDE) to write cloud-based RIAs that can be deployed to end users through the browser using Adobe's Flash Player or directly to the desktop via Adobe AIR.

The companies say the tight integration "enables client-side data management and synchronization between cloud and client, simplifying the development of applications that seamlessly run online or offline across operating systems and devices, while taking full advantage of the proven scalability, security and reliability of the Force.com platform."

The IDE can be used to extend or enhance existing Salesforce CRM implementations and custom-built Force.com applications, or to build entirely new ones.

Developers can add user interface features, such as drag and drop, incorporate data visualizations, such as charts and dashboards, turn multi-step business process applications into a one-screen experience, provide lightweight client-side integration to unify user experiences across systems inside and outside the firewall into a single application, and create new application components tailored to specific job functions or business use cases and integrate them into existing applications.