Syber News

As ubiquitous as Microsoft Windows is, in the world of the Internet (and more), it's all about Flash, despite what Microsoft may think. While Microsoft crows about 1 in 4 users having installed Silverlight, Adobe notes that Flash Player 9 set records by achieving nearly 90% reach on Internet-enabled desktops in less than nine months.

Just a day after downloads for Silverlight 2 were made available, Adobe released Flash Player 10. It expects a similar adoption rate as with Flash Player 9.

Before going any further, I was really anxious to get the released version of Flash Player 10, as I was one of the people who couldn't play Flash in Firefox. Don't know what I mean? For many users running Firefox 3 on XP or Vista, when viewing an embedded video on, say, YouTube, the videos would start playing, but they would stop after only a couple of seconds.

For me, it usually happened most often when I had a large number of tabs open. Sometimes closing and re-opening the browser would work, but eventually I gave up and used IE (sob) all the time for Flash videos. I could use the pre-release version of Flash Player 10, but some sites would insist on trying to install 9, and it became annoying.

Thankfully, that (at least for now) seems gone with Flash Player 10. I'll just say, who cares about anything else, thanks for the videos, Adobe!

But for those who do care about other stuff, here is a list of the new and enhanced features in Flash Player 10:

3D effects - Create more intuitive, engaging interfaces using built-in support for 3D effects. Get started quickly without being a 3D master by designing in 2D and easily transforming and animating in 3D. Fast, extremely lightweight, and simple-to-use APIs, along with 3D tools in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional software, make motion that was previously accessible only to expert users via ActionScript language or custom third-party libraries available to everyone.

Custom filters and effects - Create high-performance, real-time effects for cinematic experiences that quickly engage users. With new Adobe Pixel Benderâ„¢, the same technology behind many filters and effects in Adobe After Effects software, these dynamic and interactive effects can be used both in production with After Effects CS4 and live with Flash Player 10. The Pixel Bender just-in- time (JIT) compiler can also be used to process other types of data, such as sound or mathematical functions, asynchronously in a separate thread.

Advanced text support - Take advantage of a new, flexible text layout engine that brings print-quality publishing to the web, building on more than 25 years of Adobe expertise in typography. Gain more control over text layout using an extensible library of ActionScript 3.0 text components to flow text and sophisticated typographic elements such as ligatures across multiple columns, around inline images, bidirectionally, vertically, or chained together. Create multilingual rich Internet applications (RIAs) using device fonts that can now be anti-aliased, rotated, and styled, or build your own unique text components.

Dynamic sound generation - Use enhanced sound APIs to dynamically generate audio and create new types of audio applications such as music mixers and sequencers, real-time audio for games, and even audio visualizers. Work with loaded MP3 audio at a lower level by extracting audio data and supplying it to the sound buffer. Process, filter, and mix audio in real time through the Pixel Bender JIT compiler to extend creative freedom beyond the visual experience.

Drawing API (Enhanced) - Perform runtime drawing more easily with restyleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line. Developers can tweak parts of curves, change styling, replace parts, and use custom filters and effects, delivering improved throughput, creative control, and greater productivity. Enhancements to the Drawing API add the z dimension, real perspective, textured meshes in 3D space, a retained graphics model, read/write rendering, and triangle drawing with UV coordinates, while adding memory and improving performance.

Hardware acceleration (Enhanced) - Use the hardware processing power of the graphics card to paint SWF files into the browser and accelerate compositing calculations of bitmaps, filters, blend modes, and video overlays faster than would be performed in software.

Vector data type - Use the new typed array class for better performance, efficiency, and error checking of data.

Dynamic Streaming - Show exceptional video with streams that automatically adjust to changing network conditions. Leverage new quality-of-service metrics to provide a better streaming experience.

Speex audio codec - Take advantage of the new, high-fidelity and open source Speex voice codec, which offers a low-latency alternative for voice encoding. Flash Player also supports ADPCM, HE-AAC, MP3, and Nellymoser audio.

File upload and download APIs (Enhanced) - Bring users into the experience by letting them load and save files from your web application. New file reference runtime access allows local processing of data without roundtripping to the server.

In their press release, David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe said:

"Designers and developers know if they deliver video, online games, rich Internet applications (RIAs) and other interactive experiences using Adobe Flash Player, they can reliably reach the entire Web. Flash Player 10 continues to set the pace for Internet innovation, and we're excited to see how the community is already using it to create an entirely new class of experiences not previously achievable on the Web."

At the same time that Adobe announced Flash Player 10, Picnik came out with its own press release. Picnik, if you don't know, is an online photo editor, loving the effects of the aforementioned "Pixel Bender" technology:

Using "Pixel Bender," software developers will have the ability to create any number of new effects like Circle Splash and Ripple Blocks. Developers are able to manipulate images down to the individual pixel, at high speed,allowing for more sophisticated editing and effects. Picnik supports the loading of these effects for use in editing photos directly on Picnik.com.Users can find the new features in the Sandbox at: http://www.picnik.com/app#/create/sandbox.

According to comScore, approximately 86% of online videos viewed in the U.S. in August used Adobe Flash. And Flash accounted for 80% of videos streamed worldwide in August. So what are you waiting for (especially you Firefox users): start adopting, as Adobe expects you to.

http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/10/adobe-releases-flash-player-10.html