Take a look at the video below. Minko ShaderLab is an amazing web application that provides a visual programming environment for creating, testing, and sharing shaders. Written using Flex, it’s for anyone with a basic knoweldge of shader basics and 3D maths, and looks very easy to use.
It’s so powerful that you can build an entire hardware accelerated particle engine without a single line of ActionScript 3.0. So if you fancy being able to program the GPU and create shaders directly from a visual tool then do yourself a favour and sign-up for the beta tester program.