Adobe Flash Player 10 (codename “Astro”) can be downloaded from Adobe site following this link: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

New features:

1. Hardware acceleration - flash player will use the GPU for some visual processing tasks
2. Advanced Text Layout - a new engine for text layout (as you may know the old TextField has big problems when rendering text, htmlText and images) - we hope that the allowed HTML tags will be extended)
3. 3D Effects - native 3D effects to any display object
4. Custom Filters and Effects - filters and effects like the ones in After Effects CS3 will be possible using Adobe Pixel Bender
5. Enhanced Drawing API - easier runtime drawing

What developers should know that I couldn’t find the Debug Version of Astro. So if you are developing application you should keep in mind that after updating to Astro there will be no debug.

But a good news is that there you can download Flex SDK Daily updates to be able to develop applications for Astro.

There is also a demo and some videos to see the new features of Astro in action.

From what we can see the new flash player (codename “Astro”) will be a big turn for the internet and mostly for RIA and Web 2.0 industry.

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