Adobe released a beta of Flash Player 10 today, taking a clear shot across the bow of Silverlight with features like built-in 3D, hardware acceleration, richer text support, and rich media features that are very interesting to me and my team at Highwinds for obvious reasons. Check out the press release linked to above for more info.

I'm glad to see they are not sitting on their laurels waiting for Silverlight to cane Flex. Adobe has a significant headstart in the RIA space and it is releases like this that will keep them at the forefront.

One item I would love to see them work on more is Flex Builder. Having used FB3 day in and day out for a month now, it just doesn't feel polished, but it has loads of promise. That being said, I have been totally spoiled by the bad-ass Java editing support in Eclipse, so I'm definitely biased. Even so, Visual Studio is widely regarded as one of the best IDEs on the planet, so if that's the environment Silverlight developers will be working in, Adobe has their work cut out for them to make FB just as good. Let's see what happens to the IDE when Flex 4 comes out (later this year, perhaps?).