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!
Easy Flash Player version switching with Google Chrome
As a Flash developer you always want to have the latest (beta) Flash Player (like the Flash Player Incubator preview) installed to make sure your current applications still work and to play around with the new APIs. But it’s also important to know how your application behaves in the most current public version. You may also want to switch between the debug and release version of the most current public version. There are a few ways of doing this but Google Chrome makes it very easy for you.
As you know Google Chrome comes with Flash Player baked in and also automatically updates itself to the latest available release version. Next to this baked-in version you can also install a debug or beta version. By simply going to the about:plugins URL you can switch between those two versions.
The only caveat is that you can only switch between two versions and that one version will always be the most current release version. But hey… It doesn’t get much easier than this… Just disable the one you don’t need and enable the one you want to use. You don’t even have to restart your browser.
Another great reason to use Google Chrome ;-)
Flash Player settings go native
One of the major gripes about Flash Player is the tiny little settings dialog box. If you’re anything like me and have also cursed and sweared while using this dialog box you may will be happy to hear that that is changing now.
If you downloaded and installed the Flash Player Incubator release you can already check it out yourself. Not only does this new native settings panel allow you to set your camera and microphone preferences but it also allows you to delete your Flash cookies, set your P2P preferences and automatic update preferences.
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a big improvement! Flash on!
UPDATE: A few people on Twitter asked me if this was OSX only. The answer is “No”. You’ll soon see this on other platforms as well.
The future of Flash brighter than ever
Yesterday at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco Adobe launched the Adobe AIR and Flash Player Incubator program. The Incubator is a technology preview program for more adventurous developers who are willing to experiment with Flash Platform runtime features that are in early development stages.
One of those features is the Molehill API for 3D. Molehill is a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that enable advanced 3D experiences across devices through the Flash Platform runtimes. Adobe worked closely with the most popular ActionScript 3D frameworks so that not only advanced 3D developers can take advantage of these new APIs. These 3D frameworks already have Molehill enabled versions available today:
But Molehill does not just offer high performance 3D APIs but can also be used for 2D graphics! Flash Player Product Manager Thibault Imbert has more information and an example on his blog.
Unity added the cherry on top of yesterday’s news. They announced that an upcoming version of Unity (the very popular game development tool) will allow developers to target Flash Player. I can’t wait to play around with it!
These are very exciting times for Flash developers! Check out Tinic Uro’s blog to see how you can start playing with Molehill today!
Flash on!
Flash Player 10.2 available now
It is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Hmm… I think I’ve heard that before somewhere. And yeah I know… I’m exaggerating a bit ;-) What I mean to say is that while Flash Player 10.2 only seems like a minor update, the new capabilities it brings to the web are not at all minor.
This release introduces Stage Video, a full hardware accelerated video pipeline for best-in-class, beautiful video across platforms and browsers. Additionally, this version of Flash Player offers all the new capabilities previewed in our beta release, such as custom native mouse cursors, multiple monitor full-screen support, Internet Explorer 9 hardware accelerated rendering support, and enhanced sub-pixel rendering for superior text readability.
Companies such as Vimeo, Brightcove, Epix, and YouTube have already started work to enable support for Stage Video to deliver amazing video playback experiences. You’ll be seeing them enable Stage Video performance in the near future. And you can try examples of Stage Video today after upgrading to Flash Player 10.2. If you’re using Google Chrome you can just run Chrome’s updater and you will be ready to go.
If you work with video in Flash make sure you add Stage Video capabilities to your project today!
UPDATE: The debug version of Flash Player 10.2 is available here.
Flash on!
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