Adobe's XMP Toolkit 4.0, AJAX bridge

Adobe today announced the public beta of Adobe XMP Toolkit 4.0, a pre-release of the company’s industry-standard file labeling technology. Based on open-source technology, the new beta toolkit contains Adobe XMP libraries that provide third-party software developers with the building blocks to develop optimized workflow products. The libraries help integrate metadata into design and publishing applications and systems. Adobe XMP offers a common method for capturing, sharing and leveraging valuable file information for more efficient job processing, workflow automation and data rights management processes. The beta, available for Apple's Xcode development environment, provides the new ability to consistently add metadata to popular image, document and video file formats. It also offers a centralized view of XMP data through Adobe Bridge, the navigational control center at the heart of Adobe's creative solutions. [updated]

"The sophisticated file handler libraries in this prerelease version of the XMP Toolkit provide new elements required to power publishing automation workflows," said Mark Hilton, vice president of Creative Suites at Adobe. "Design and publishing is a collaborative process among the creatives and publishers who deliver content and companies like Adobe that create the products relied on across creative workflows. By integrating Adobe XMP, companies can deliver products and systems that reduce production costs, eliminate errors and improve production cycle times for their customers."

The XMP Toolkit Version 4.0 Prerelease is available for Windows (Visual Studio 2005) and Macintosh (Xcode 2.2) platforms as a free download from the Adobe Labs Web.

Adobe Builds Bridge to Ajax

In addition, Adobe last week released two new open-source libraries to help developers bridge Adobe Flash and Flex technology with the hot Asynchronous JavaScript and XML style of development. The software allows developers to use Adobe Flex, Flash Player and AJAX to create RIAs (rich Internet applications), according to eWEEK.

"The two new open-source libraries—the Flex-AJAX Bridge and the AJAX Client for Flex Data Services—will enable developers to easily add the capabilities of the Flash Player and the Flex framework to AJAX applications. And developers also can add AJAX functionality into RIAs built with Flex."

The report notes that Adobe's platform supports functions that AJAX does not support, such as programmable audio, video, vector graphics, synchronous publish/subscribe data connectivity, offline data storage and cross-domain data access.

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