This is a very exciting release for Adobe. Not only is it the first time that we sim-ship Flash Player and AIR for all 3 major operating systems (Mac, Windows & Linux), Flash Player 10.1 is also the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project. While we’re only releasing the beta version of Flash Player 10.1 for the desktop we do plan to roll out additional betas prior to the release with more features, performance improvements, new tooling options and support for mobile platforms. I’ve been lucky enough to play with some smart phones that already have Flash Player 10.1 and I am absolutely amazed to see the performance on these devices. It’s also great to finally have FP10 in the browser on a mobile device. It’s great to see you can now have the full web in your mobile browser!
We’ve already talked about and demoed some of the new features at MAX. Check out the feature page on Labs for a complete list of new features in Flash Player 10.1 and Christian Cantrell’s blog for a comprehensive list of new features in AIR. Christian also has a bunch of code samples on his blog demonstrating the new features. Also check out Adobe TV for more demos and tutorials.
Don’t forget… These are pre-release BETA releases. While the Flash Player and AIR teams do their very best to maintain backward compatibility, things may break. And that is exactly why we do these public betas. If you do come across an application that doesn’t work, make sure you tell us about it!
I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with this new set of building blocks… Flash on!
Stratus is a beta hosted rendezvous service that helps establish communication between Flash Player or AIR clients. Once two clients are connected to Stratus, they can send data directly client to client. The APIs in Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5 allow for point-to-point communication between a small number of subscribers. Publishers have to send data to all subscribing clients, so the number of subscribers is limited to the available bandwidth on the publisher end.
