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Macromedia Central 1.5

Macromedia has released a major update to Central, their environment for occasionally connected computing. Central 1.5 is very much a developer driven release, based on feedback from Flash developers.

When Macromedia released the first version of Central, the whole community were buzzing with excitement. For a while, it seemed like everyone in the Flash blogging scene were making Central applications. From the beginning, Macromedia said that Central 1.0 was a developer release, not intended for broad distribution, but rather to gather feedback from the Flash community.

Macromedia got feedback. Heaps of it. Many were concerned about the Licensing Model proposed. Others required new features in the Central Player. The 1.5 release answers most of the questions raised and enforces the image of Central as a very good idea. Here's the major additions / changes:

- Automatic network detection, which now works on Mac and PC platforms
- Flash MX 2004 extensions to ease the development workflow
- Simpler and much less restrictive licensing models
- Support for securely accessing the local file system, and support for remote file upload and download
- Support for Flash Player 7, ActionScript 2.0, and the new component architecture
- Early support for building Central applications with Macromedia Flex

Read more here

Written by Jens C Brynildsen (September 19th 2004)