Wohooow… It’s always great to wake up to new toys to play with! Flash Player 10.1 and AIR2.0 are now available on Adobe Labs.

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!

One of the most requested features for both Flash Player and AIR is definitely a spell checker. Grant Skinner released a spell check engine about 2 years ago and it has been used in number of different applications. While it was totally worth the cost, I did hear from some people that they thought this was an expensive solution. Adobe also recognized the need for a spell check solution for Flash Player and AIR and a small team has been working on this for a while.

Today Adobe released a first preview version of Squiggly. The Squiggly library allows you to easily add spell checking functionality in any Flex 3 based text control. The distribution package consists of a utility for building your own spelling dictionaries, a sample English dictionary, an ActionScript package that checks individual words for spelling accuracy, and sample code that demonstrates “check as you type” functionality [demo]. At the moment the library only supports English but the team has promised to address this limitation in a future release.

Links:
Squiggly on Labs
Download Squiggly
Download Squiggly ASDoc
Squiggly forum

Want to build a video chat application, multi-player games or voice-over-ip applications for the Flash Player or AIR without worrying about setting up a server infrastructure? Stratus (which we showcased at MAX) is your new best friend.

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.

The Stratus technology page is now live on Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/stratus. Developers can use their Adobe ID to sign up for a unique developer key that is required to connect to the Stratus Service. While it is in beta, the Stratus service is free for developers to use.

To help you get started, we’ve also provided a sample video phone application. The working sample is live on the Adobe Labs site and we’ve provided the source code and a developer center article to help you build your own applications.

For more info about Stratus and answers to Frequently Asked Questions go to: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Stratus:FAQ