Adobe has released a new version for their 2 runtimes, Flash Player and AIR. Naturally, with those releases come new and improved features as well. Let’s take a look at what makes it worth to upgrade to the next version.
Let’s start with the new Flash Player. You can download it here and it’s finally available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Here are some of the features of this new version:
- HTTP Dynamic Streaming
- Global error handling
- 3D effects
- Dynamic filters, blend modes, effects and fills
- Custom filters and effects
- Dynamic framerate
- Microphone support
- Support for large bitmaps
- …
All in all, it’s just too much to list all of the new and improved stuff for the Flash Player here. So don’t wait any longer and take advantage of it.
As for the new release of AIR, that’s even more exiting. I’ve been working with AIR for a couple of months now and I must say the new stuff is really awesome. Let’s take a look at what you can expect from it:
- Multi-touch and gestures
- Improved WebKit integration with HTML5/CSS3 support
- Microphone access
- Mass storage detection (aka USB detection, but also works on SD cards and such)
- SSL socket connections
- Enhanced printer interaction
- Enhanced drag-and-drop support
- Support for screen readers to help the visually impaired
- IME API (for using multibyte character sets in your input
- …
There’s only one thing I don’t like about this release and that is the fact that apparently Adobe didn’t continue to work on the SQLite database. I strongly believe that it needs some serious enhancements (although it’s already quite good) to get the full enterprise potential out of AIR. I’m hoping they still will work on it for future releases.
If you are as exited as I am about these new capabilities, then go and grab the new runtime here.
