For example, Adobe and Salesforce.com demonstrated one application that allowed pharmaceutical sales representatives to access customer and marketing information while offline and make changes, and then update the changes to Force.com once back online.

The new IDE isn't meant to replace Salesforce.com's existing development tools, said Eric Stahl, senior director of product marketing.

The vendor's Force.com IDE is still used to create custom objects, develop workflow rules, and "all the kind of things that need to happen in the guts of the application," he said.

Developers may also choose to simply embed Flash components into UIs built with Salesforce.com's VisualForce toolset, but in other cases will strip that layer out entirely in favor of Adobe technology, Gruber said.

For years, Salesforce.com has touted Force.com as a full-blown enterprise application development platform. The partnership with Adobe doesn't represent a retreat from such claims, Stahl said.