New on Adobe Labs: Flash Player 11 beta 2 and AIR 3 beta 2
New toys goooood ;-)
If you’re anything like me you’ve probably already downloaded the new Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 betas from Labs. If not… Do so now! I know I’ve said this many times before but I’ll repeat it again: We release these betas so that you can test your existing content and start playing around with the new features early. If you encounter anything weird or out of the ordinary then do let us know!
Right… My favorite new features…
For Flash Player 11 it has to be Stage3D (the API previously know as Molehill). 3D on the web is nothing new but when all of a sudden (just about) every web user has 3D capabilities it becomes a whole different ball game. I’m really looking forward to see what you guys build with it. Some of the early demos are absolutely mind-blowing. Another great feature in Flash Player 11 (and an easy one to miss) is native JSON support! (Both features are also available in AIR 3. Stage3D currently only available for desktop. Stage3D for mobile will be enabled in a future release.)
AIR 3 beta 2 is also a really exciting beta release! My favorite feature for AIR 3 is definitely the ability to add the AIR runtime to your installer package. So with AIR 3 you can control exactly which version of the runtime an app executes against and make the installation process a lot easier as well. Hardware accelerated video (aka StageVideo) on mobile is also a big one. And let’s not forget the addition of the encrypted local storage feature on mobile.
Both betas are available on Labs. Flash on!
AIR 2.7 + Flash Player 10.3 Beta 2 on Labs
The runtime teams are on a roll! Flash Player 10.2 was only released to the general public just last month and the first beta of Flash Player 10.3 was already on Adobe Labs just a few weeks after that. Today the second beta of Flash Player 10.3 is available on Labs.
Flash Player 10.3 introduces new developer features and enhanced user privacy protection, such as:
- Media measurement
- Acoustic echo cancellation
- Integration with browser privacy control for local storage
- Native control panel
- Auto-update notification for Mac OS
We’ve also just released AIR 2.7 on Labs. AIR 2.7 also has the media measurement and acoustic echo cancellation features from Flash Player 10.3 as well as an enhanced HTMLLoader API.
These new beta runtimes are available so that you can test your existing content and start playing around with the new APIs. If you find an issue make sure you tell us about it!
Introducing StageVideo and Flash Player 10.2
StageVideo is a huge improvement to Flash Player! By using StageVideo in your applications you can decrease processor usage by up to 85%. It also enables higher frame rates, reduced memory usage, and greater pixel fidelity and quality. In addition to leveraging hardware decoding of H.264 video (introduced with Flash Player 10.1), Flash Player can now display and scale video using the GPU as well, performing all calculations in graphics hardware to offload work from the CPU and extend battery life. StageVideo benefits not only H.264 video, but all video codecs in Flash Player are composited by the GPU when StageVideo is used.
If you haven’t seen the StageVideo demo by Tinic Uro at Adobe MAX you may want to check that out first!
Now that you’ve seen the demo it’s time to start building and test your video apps. Using the StageVideo API is really easy. My colleague Mihai Corlan has an excellent blog post on how to add StageVideo to your applications.
While StageVideo is a big and fantastic improvement in Flash Player it is not the only new feature. Developers can now also define custom native mouse cursors. This new feature allows developers to define native mouse cursors, including animated cursors, at the OS level. This eliminates the need for ActionScript code to emulate custom native cursors, increasing performance.
For more information check out Adobe Labs.
Android week: AIR for Android prerelease
From the AIR Team Blog: “We are pleased today to announce the public availability of the Adobe AIR for Android Developer Prerelease program. Any designer or developer interested in building Android applications using the Flash Platform is welcome to join this program to get access to our beta SDK. Whether you are already an experienced Flash developer or just interested in learning Flash, we encourage you to join our prerelease program to get started on building Android applications today using AIR.”
Flash Player 10.1 preview release for Android at Google I/O
Even though I already have FP10.1 installed on my Nexus One (one of the many perks of working at Adobe ;-)), I’m very happy to see that we will be releasing a public preview of Flash Player 10.1 for Android on my birthday… eh I mean… at Google I/O on May 19th/20th.
Ever since I switched to the Nexus One as my main phone I’ve been using Flash Player on the Android browser just about every day. I already told you a while ago that I am a news junkie and that I like to keep up with the news wherever I go. When something happens in the world, I usually visit a number of different news sites to see what they have to say. A lot of news outlets use Flash to deliver their videos. With Flash Player 10.1 installed on my device I can just open up a browser window, type in the URL that I am used to browsing to on my desktop machine and then just click on the video which starts playing instantly. No need to (purchase) download and install an app. The same content that I am used to seeing on my desktop machine is just right there.
I can’t wait to see and read your experiences with Flash Player on your mobile device. Google’s Android may be first but RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others will follow soon.
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