Adobe plans on Tuesday to unveil the public beta of its Adobe Flex 2.0 and Adobe Flash Player 8.5 tools, which have been upgraded The ompany will also make licensing changes to encourage broad adoption of the Flash development tool set. Adobe, which added Flex products to its offerings after acquiring Macromedia last month, will make its Flex Software Development Kit available for free.

The kit includes the tools needed to develop, compile and deploy Flex applications. The products are aimed at professional software developers who write Web applications that use the Flash presentation system.

The beta of Flex 2.0 is scheduled to be available for download on Wednesday from the Adobe Labs Web site, along with Adobe Flash Player 8.5. A final version of Flex 2.0 is due in the second quarter this year.

With the beta release, Adobe plans to unbundle the components of the Flex package and lower prices in an effort to encourage developers to use the software. The company's goal is to increase the number of Flex developers from several thousand to a million, said Jeff Whatcott, senior director of product marketing at Adobe's enterprise and developer business unit.