Systems issued a release candidate for
Flash Player 11 yesterday, an update
that brings major new features to its
widely used but competitively
threatened browser plug-in.
Flash brings cross-platform advantages
to programmers, letting them write
software without having to worry so
much about browser compatibility
matters. But a wide variety of new Web
standards--some now developed with
Adobe help-- are injecting new life into a
plug-in-free version of the Web. At the
same time, Flash is banned outright
from iOS devices and only has a small
foothold on Android devices.
Adobe is working to keep Flash
relevant, though, in part by heading for
the high end. As Web standards take on
formatting, layout, animation, and some
audio and video tasks, Adobe is aiming
Flash primarily at gaming, high-end
video, and in-house company
applications.
Thus, a number of new features are
coming to Flash 11, which is available
for download on Adobe Labs . Among
them:
• A 64-bit design. Browsers increasingly
are 64-bit software, letting them take
advantage of more memory and some
extra processor features, but it's
difficult to use 32-bit plug-ins in 64-bit
browsers. The lack of 64-bit plug-ins is
one reason people are increasingly
browsing the Web without plug-ins ,
Microsoft believes.
• The "Molehill " interface for hardware-
accelerated 3D graphics. This is a prime
area of interest to gaming
programmers, where online app
developers are faced with deciding
among Flash, native apps, Khronos'
WebGL standard, and Microsoft's
Silverlight. Unity, whose cross-platform
game engine is widely used in mobile
device software, just gave Flash a vote
of confidence by announcing developers
can generate Flash versions of Unity
apps.
• Support for JPEG XR, an image format
designed by Microsoft that's now an
international standard. It offers better
compression than conventional JPEG,
allies assert, but Adobe is interested in
JPEG XR because it can make some
areas of the image transparent, reduce
image file size, and improve color
quality. Plus, it' s "computationally
lightweight," Adobe said .
• New codecs-- the software that
encodes and decodes audio and video
data. Flash already could decode H.264
video, but now it can encode it, too,
which could be handy for Webcams. The
audio support now includes the G.711
codec for telephony. The release notes
so far make no mention of Adobe's
promised support for Google's VP8
video codec . For copy-protected video,
Flash 11 also brings support for
Adobe's Flash Access Content
Protection technology to the mobile
version of Flash, too.
Flash 11 is paired with AIR 3, a version
of Adobe's cross-platform foundation
for standalone programs. AIR includes
browser technology as well as Flash.
AIR 3 will bring new features, too,
including "captive runtime" technology
that packages AIR under the covers with
software; support for background audio
on iOS; and the ability to use front-
facing cameras on Android.
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