FLEX{er} » Flash

Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 Launched

Andrei Ionescu — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:23:21 +0000

Now that MAX 2011 Conference is started, Adobe just launched the Flash Player 11 and AIR 3. Take a look at the features introduced by each of them.

Flash Player 11 features

Native 64-bit support (Flash Player desktop)
Stage 3D accelerated graphics rendering
Adobe Flash Access content protection support for mobile
Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) support
G.711 audio compression for telephony
Garbage collection advice
Cubic Bézier curves
Secure random number generator
Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and Flash Access enhancements
TLS secure sockets support (new for Flash Player)
Socket progress events
Native text input UI (mobile)
JPEG-XR support
Enhanced high-resolution bitmap support
High-efficiency SWF compression support
DisplayObjectContainer.removeChildren and MovieClip.isPlaying
Sound.loadCompressedDataFromByteArray and Sound.loadPCMFromByteArray
Asynchronous bitmap decoding

Test if you have Flash Player 11 installed here: http://blogs.adobe.com/sunil/2011/10/04/test/.

Get Adobe Flash Player 11 from here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

If you look for the debugger version of Flash Player 11 go to this link: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

AIR 3 features

Stage3D (desktop only)
Native extensions (all platforms)
Android Market licensing integration (Android only, obviously)
Captive runtime bundles (Android and desktop)
Background audio playback (new feature in iOS; already works on Android)
CameraRoll support for iPad
Hardware-accelerated video (mobile)
Native text fields (mobile)
Front-facing camera support (iOS and Android)
Mobile-encrypted local storage (brings feature parity between desktop and mobile)
Device speaker control (mobile)
Native JSON support (mobile and desktop)
Socket improvements (mobile and desktop)
H.264 video encoding (desktop only)
JPEG XR support (mobile and desktop)
Higher resolution bitmaps (mobile and desktop)
Multichannel audio digital output (AIR for TV only)
Advanced controller support (AIR for TV only)
More easily removing all children from a container (all platforms)
More easily determine if a MovieClip is playing (all platforms)
Secure random number generation (mobile and desktop)
Support for cubic bezier curves (all platforms)

Get Adobe AIR 3 from here: http://get.adobe.com/air/

The features were only listed. Read more bellow to find put more about each feature…
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/10/adobe-flash-player-11-air-11-available-later-today.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/whats-new-flash-player11.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/air3_whatsnew.html

OSMF 1.6 and Strobe Media Playback 1.6 Released

Andrei Ionescu — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:18:28 +0000

Adobe just released the version 1.6 of both OSMF and Strobe Media Playback. The main things added to them are:

Stage Video support for hardware-accelerated video presentation (OSMF)
Smartphone and tablet optimized chrome for Flash-enabled devices (Strobe Media Playback)
HTML5 video player for non-Flash devices (Strobe Media Playback)
JavaScript device detection library for selecting the appropriate player and chrome (Strobe Media Playback)
DVR rolling window support, which allows you specify how far back from the live point viewers can rewind (OSMF)
Late-binding audio for providing viewers with multiple audio track options, e.g. additional languages, director’s commentary, and “home” v. “away” coverage (OSMF)
Improvements to HTTP Dynamic Streaming as well as the ability to better manage bitrate profiles with multi-level manifests (OSMF)

Adobe Annouced Creative Suite 5.5

Andrei Ionescu — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:19:10 +0000

Yesterday, 11th of April, Adobe announced Creative Suite 5.5.

Besides all new features and improvements introduced in the new CS5.5, part of them presented in the previous video and some listed bellow, another new thing introduced with Creative Suite 5.5 is the “Pay as you go” subscription. Besides buying the whole product now the products can be rented for shorter periods of times. This helps a lot development teams that work on short term projects. Read more about it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html?promoid=INPKB

Now lets get back to what is new in the products…

Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK

Multiscreen development with Flex 4.5 SDK
New Spark components in Flex 4.5 SDK
- Spark DataGrid
- Spark Form
- Spark Image and BitmapImage enhancements
Spark Formatters
Video and text enhancements in Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK
Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK compiler improvements

There are too many new features and improvements to list them here. If you need to know more please read: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Builder 4.5

Developing mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Blackberry Tablet OS
Accelerated coding for Flex and ActionScript projects
Improved designer/developer workflow
Updated platform support
Improved Performance
Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP

There are many great changes but the most important I think is the workflow for developing mobile applications. See a video about it bellow:

Please read more about Flash Builder 4.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.5

Resizable applications and components
Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflow (see Understanding new Flash Catalyst CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 workflows)
Prototyping and wireframing enhancements

I just mentioned a few of them and didn’t go deep into each feature or improvement, but you can read more here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashcatalyst/articles/introducing-flashcatalyst-cs55.html

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5

CSS3 and HTML5 authoring
jQuery Mobile integration
Native mobile apps (for iOS and Android) with PhoneGap

Read more about new features and improvements in Dreamweaver CS5.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/whats-new-dwcs55.html

Other products that are included in Creative Suite got lots of new features and improvements and to see more keep an eye on adobe.com.

Flash Player 10.3 Beta Now Available

Andrei Ionescu — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:09:28 +0000

Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Beta is launched and can be downloaded from Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10-3.html. Flash Player 10.3 is available for all major operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux) and debug version is also available.

New features 10 Flash Player 10.3:

Media Measurement – Measuring video just got easier. With Flash Player 10.3 and Adobe SiteCatalyst®, developers can implement video analytics with as little as two lines of code. Analytics solutions can use a new set of open APIs to easily implement consistent video analytics irrespective of implementation or delivery protocol. Media Measurement for Flash allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what the audience reach is, and how much video is played.
Acoustic Echo Cancellation – Flash Player 10.3 enables developers to create real-time online collaboration experiences with high-quality audio, such as telephony, in-game voice chat, and group conferencing applications. Developers can take advantage of acoustic echo cancellation, noise suppression, voice activity detection, and automatic compensation for various microphone input levels. End users will be able to experience higher quality audio facilitating smoother conversation flow, without using a headset.
Integration with browser privacy controls for managing local storage

– Users now have a simpler way to clear local storage from the browser settings interface – similar to how users clear their browser cookies today. Flash Player 10.3 integrates control of local storage with the browser’s privacy settings in Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, and future releases of Apple Safari and Google Chrome.
Native Control Panel – Flash Player 10.3 provides users with streamlined controls for managing their Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can access the Flash Player Settings Manager directly from the Control Panels or System Preferences on their computers.

Auto-Update Notification for Mac OS – Flash Player 10.3 supports automatic notification of software updates on Mac OS, making it easier for Mac users to stay current with new capabilities in the latest version of Flash Player.

Read more:
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/03/introducing-flash-player-10-3-beta.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashruntimereleases/2011/03/07/flash-player-10-3-beta-available/

Adobe® AIR® and Adobe Flash® Player Incubator – Flash Player 11 Available

Andrei Ionescu — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:33:57 +0000

The Adobe® AIR® and Adobe Flash® Player 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. Test the bleeding-edge capabilities of runtimes and contribute to the future of the Flash Platform. Please note that the capabilities in the Incubator builds may or may not be supported in future releases of the runtimes.

Adobe Flash Player 11 Incubator can be downloaded from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplatformruntimes_incubator.html and debug versions are also available.

The main thing added in Flash Player 11 Incubator is “Molehill” 3D APIs for Flash Player and AIR which is a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that enable advanced 3D experiences across devices through the Adobe Flash Platform runtimes.

This is a video to see what’s about “Molehill”:

To test the new 3D capabilities of Flash Player 11 Incubator see:

http://alternativaplatform.com/en/demos/maxracer/

http://molehill.zombietycoon.com/

http://infiniteturtles.co.uk/projects/away3d/broomstick/ShallowWaterDemo.html

http://aerys.in/minko-quake-3

Read more:
http://blog.everythingflex.com/2011/03/01/flash-player-11-incubator-program/

Flash Player 10.2 is Launched

Andrei Ionescu — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:05:48 +0000

On 8 February 2011 Adobe launched the new Flash Player 10.2. The best new thing in this new version of the Flash Player is Stage Video, a full hardware accelerated video pipeline for best-in-class, beautiful video across platforms and browsers.

Additional features are:

multiple display full screen support in Flash Player 10.2

custom native mouse cursors

sub-pixel text rendering enhancements to leverage Adobe typography research to further enhance text readability

support for the GPU rendering technology in Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser

The debug version of Flash Player 10.2 can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html.

Flash Player 10.1 Enabled Devices

Andrei Ionescu — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:58:37 +0000

Flash Player 10.1 for Android has been released to different partners and a few mobile devices now do use Flash Player 10.1.

Google

Nexus One

HTC

Evo 4G

Desire

Motorola

Droid

Droid 2

Droid X

Also, you can see the list on adobe.com. Today there are six but the number is increasing and I’m sure other devices will emerge.

Adobe Is Resuming Development on The Packager for iPhone

Andrei Ionescu — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:17:53 +0000

In the previous article Apple let us know that they are relaxing the App Store Review Guidelines. This is great moment and Adobe could not miss it. Adobe’s Packager for iPhone is already available in the Flash Professional CS5 and Adobe is resuming development on it.

Although this is a big step forward, Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.

I’ll end with a quote from Adobe Featured Blogs…

Adobe will continue to work to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1 as well as standalone applications on AIR to a broad range of devices, working with key industry partners including Google, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Palm/HP, RIM, Samsung and others.

You can download the packager from Adobe Labs.

Apple Starting Love Adobe by Relaxing App Store Review Guidelines?

Andrei Ionescu — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:31:36 +0000

Previously Apple restricted the application development for iPod, iPhone & iPad and excluded a number of technologies like Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5, but no limited to these.

See the following articles that explains the limitations:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-puts-another-nail-into-flashs-coffin/6554
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/04/20/on-adobe-flash-cs5-and-iphone-applications/

As a result to this restrictions Adobe has stopped the development for the iPhone.

Apple implied about Adobe…

They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.

But Adobe demonstrated the opposite that Flash Player 10 is suitable and ready for mobile market by working closely with Google to integrate Flash Player 10 with Android OS and this way enabling the release of the Motorola Droid 2 mobile phone with Flash Player 10 (see the printed ad here).

Today, 9th of September, Apple did relaxed the App Store Review Guidelines allowing third party development tools. The things that changes are:

3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple’s built-in WebKit framework.

With these changes, in my opinion, Apple admits that they did a mistake and now they are trying to fix it. Apple’s problem is that Android Market is gaining in App Store’s detriment and lots of developers started developing applications for Android using third party tools. As a result to this Adobe’s shares did explode today.

Let’s wait for Adobe’s response to Apple’s move.

Further readings:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/86cf0890-bc32-11df-8c02-00144feab49a.html?referrer_id=yahoofinance&ft_ref=yahoo1&segid=03058
http://m.zdnet.com/blog/apple/app-store-review-guidelines-published-third-party-dev-tools-allowed/8131

Augmented Reality for Online Shopping

Andrei Ionescu — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:26:55 +0000

Today I came across the following video…

The application in the video is a virtual dressing room! You can try out the clothes you want to buy in your living room and then purchase them if you like how they fit you or send the image to your friends on Facebook. What you need is only a webcam and you’re good to go.

The application is built on top of Flash Player 10 Platform, is made using Flex 4 SDK and uses the Unifeye AR product of Metaio Studio.

Enjoy the experience!