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Xamlon Inc. is expected to release a preview of its latest product, Xamlon Pro, Flash Edition, on April 6.
Xamlon, which focuses on producing tools that enable developers to create rich applications for Windows PocketPC and the Web, is scheduled to release the preview of this product, which lets developers use Microsoft Corp.s C# and Visual Basic .Net to write applications for Macromedia Inc.s Flash environment.
Paul Colton, chief executive of La Jolla, Calif.-based Xamlon, said that with the new Xamlon Pro Flash Edition, Xamlon will be able to tap millions of Visual Basic and C# developers and swell the ranks of Flash developers with programmers who can use the .Net languages to write Flash applications.
Colton said Xamlon is enabling developers to publish to Flash using .Net and design their user interfaces in XAML, the Extensible Application Markup Language from Microsoft.
The approach Xamlon is promoting is somewhat like the Ajax model that is gaining popularity, Colton said.
“Ajax is a great model, but its very complex to build large, scalable apps in JavaScript,” said Colton.
Ajax, which translates roughly to “asynchronous JavaScript and XML,” is a term coined by Web-development consultancy Adaptive Path.
Ajax is a set of technologies for building rich Web applications.
Xamlon is attempting to piggyback on Ajaxs momentum with its own set of Web development technologies, which it has christened Aflax (for asynchronous Flash and XML).
The new Xamlon Pro Flash Edition tool is one element of Aflax.
Xamlons premise: By using C# and Visual Basic .Net (or Java, later this year), a developer will be able to deploy directly to Flash, instead of to multiple browsers.
Next week at the Flashforward conference in San Francisco, Xamlon will show off a near final beta Xamlon Pro Flash Edition.
Some examples of applications Colton said developers will be able to build with the tool include ads and banners, online games, learning tools, interactive applications, dashboards, e-commerce shopping sites and cartography applications.
“The value proposition is that this enables developers and designers to work with the tools they already know,” Colton said.
The preview release will be available on Xamlons Web site.
And the final 1.0 version will cost $499 per developer and should be available May 3.
Later in the year, Xamlon will release an enterprise edition of the product and a version for Java developers, Colton said.