- Creative Expression
- Custom Filters and Effects
- 3D Effects
- New Text Engine
- Text Layout Components
- Drawing API Enhancements
- Color Management
- Visual Performance Improvements
- GPU Compositing
- GPU Blitting
- Anti-Aliasing Engine (Saffron 3.1)
- Vector Data Type
- Rich Media
- Enhanced Sound APIs
- Dynamic Streaming
- RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)
- Speex Audio Codec
- Other Community Requested Enhancements
- NSS for Linux — New in Aug 11 release
- Linux WMODE
- Video4Linux v2 Support
- unloadAndStop
- Limited Fullscreen Keyboard Access
- File Reference
- Dynamic Sound Generation
- Large Bitmap Support
- Context Menu
- GB18030 Compliance
- Ubuntu OS Support
Creative Expression
Flash
Player 10 will further the innovative and cinematic experiences users
have come to expect from RIAs and rich media, taking web applications
to a level previously only seen on the desktop.
Custom Filters and Effects
— Expand your creative control by creating your own portable filters,
blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Bender, the same technology
used to power filters and effects in After Effects CS3. Pixel Bender
is a high performance image processing language that takes the pain out
of writing custom, multithreaded effects and filters that can be added
to web applications without any Flash Player update. Custom filters
and effects can be combined with existing native Flash Player filters
and applied to all display objects, including vectors, bitmaps, and
video while retaining full interactivity. Custom effects can be
parameterized to animate and change the effect at runtime. There is
minimal impact on application size as complex filters are generally
under 1KB.
3D Effects — Add a new dimension to
your applications and extend the creative possibilities by easily
transforming and animating any 2D display object through 3D space,
while retaining all of the interactivity that exists in 2D space.
Fast, extremely lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was
previously reserved for expert users via ActionScript or Open Source
libraries such as PaperVision3D, Sandy and Away3D available to
everyone. Create complex effects with simple code by nesting
3D-transformed objects inside each other. Inheritance makes it easy to
rapidly apply changes across objects.
New Text Engine
— A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with
TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by
providing low-level access to text layout and interactivity APIs to
create component-level text objects. The new text engine expands
creative freedom by treating device fonts as first class citizens that
can be anti-aliased, rotated, and styled and have filters applied as if
they were embedded. The new text engine also offers right-to-left and
vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like
ligatures.
Text Layout Components — An extensible
library of ActionScript 3.0 text components, coming in future to Adobe
Labs, provides advanced, easy-to-integrate layout functionality that
enables typographic creative expression. Layout and style text with
tables, inline images, and column flow through components that are
compatible with both Flash and Flex, all while getting the benefits of
the new text engine. Rich text components allow designers and
developers to flow text and complex scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew,
and Thai, across multiple columns like a newspaper, around tables and
inline images, from right-to-left, left-to-right, bi-directionally, or
vertically. Selection, editing, and wrapping of text are handled as
would be expected for the different layouts.
Drawing API Enhancements
— Enhancements to the Drawing API make runtime drawing much easier with
re-styleable 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 performance,
creative control, and developer productivity. The enhancements extend
the current drawing API to allow for read/write rendering and triangle
drawing with UV coordinates, while adding memory and performance
improvements that allow developers to create shapes using ActionScript
that can be modified at runtime without re-drawing, edit dynamic
drawings by modifying paths, and chain methods together to instantiate
operations with a single method call. Support for repeating bitmaps
using GraphicsTrianglePath and drawTriangles has been added.
Color Management
— Flash Player 10 employs color management to deliver web applications
with the most accurate color possible, so your favorite web
destinations look the way they were intended. Opt-in color management
allows you to convert SWFs into sRGB (standard RGB), an international
standard color space formulated by the International Electrotechnical
Commission (IEC). Color management works with the monitor’s ICC color
profile, turning the entire SWF into a color-managed object. Color
management can be toggled on and off at runtime.
Return to feature list
Visual Performance Improvements
Flash
Player 10 builds on the dramatic script execution performance
improvements introduced in Flash Player 9 with the new ActionScript 3.0
Virtual Machine (AVM2) by enhancing the equally important visual
performance of your RIAs and rich media experiences. Leveraging the
power of the GPU for blitting and compositing reduces the load on the
CPU and can provide a performance boost to many graphically intense
applications, resulting in more fluid, realistic and responsive user
experiences.
GPU Compositing — Combining images,
filters, and video in your SWF just got faster. Your video card can be
used to do compositing on all raster content. Utilizing the hardware
processing power of the graphics card, GPU compositing accelerates
compositing calculations of bitmaps, filters, blend modes, and video
overlays faster than would be performed in software on the CPU. GPU
compositing is applied when specified in the HTML parameters provided
appropriate graphics hardware is available. If the hardware does not
provide required capability, Flash Player will fall back to the
software rendering without user interaction. Hardware compositing
takes advantage of the tremendous memory bandwidth and computational
horsepower of the GPU, reducing the load on the CPU, and can provide a
performance boost to many graphically intense applications, resulting
in more fluid, realistic and responsive user experiences. Open GL 2.0
video card with GLSL capabilities required to use this feature. When in
use with the beta, a green square will appear in the upper left corner
when accelerated.
GPU Blitting — Paint SWFs into
the browser using your video card by choosing this new HTML parameter.
Your content can run faster and give you the freedom to do more.
Developers can enable or disable GPU surfacing to perform hardware
blitting for each SWF within a web page without having to recompile the
SWF. GPU surfacing extends the hardware-scaled fullscreen view
introduced in Flash Player 9 Update 3 and applies it to the browser
window so that the pixels drawn to the browser go through the GPU,
resulting in improved performance and reduced CPU demand, rendering
video- or image-intensive applications faster.
Anti-Aliasing Engine (Saffron 3.1)
— An update to the Saffron anti-aliasing text engine increases
performance and quality of anti-aliased text, particularly for Asian
character rendering. Support for stroke fonts reduces memory
requirements.
Vector Data Type — Flash Player 10
and ActionScript 3.0 add support for a new data type called Vector that
is an ECMAScript 4 proposed language addition that is similar to an
Array but requires that all elements be of the same type. By having a
consistent type, performance on Vectors is significantly higher than
Arrays. Vectors work as a parameterized type.
Return to feature list
Rich Media
Flash
Player 10 introduces new audio and video features that will be
available with intended future releases of Adobe Flash Media Server or
other Adobe server products to optimize the delivery of rich media and
enhance end-user experiences.
Enhanced Sound APIs
— Work with loaded MP3 audio at a lower level in Flash Player 10. You
can extract audio data as a byteArray. The new APIs also let you have
access to the sound buffer through a callback that is triggered as the
buffer runs low. You can supply data from the extraction API or you can
produce dynamic audio on your own. The combined APIs will let you do
application level audio compositing and even audio filtering with Adobe
Pixel Bender.
Dynamic Streaming — Always show the
best video possible with streams that can automatically adjust to
changing network conditions. By changing bitrates, you can keep your
user engaged and avoid start-and-stop video. Dynamic streaming provides
the best possible experience to the video consumer based on their
bandwidth environment. Video streams over RTMP from intended future
releases of Flash Media Server can dynamically change bitrate as
network conditions change. Quality of Service metrics, exposed via
ActionScript and providing real-time network or CPU information, allow
developers to take control of the video playback and adjust the
streaming experience accordingly. This feature is part of Flash Player
10 but will only be available with intended future releases of Flash
Media Server. Flash Player 10 now supports dynamic switching between
media with different audio sampling rates as well. We have introduced a
new NetStreamInfo property, NetStreamInfo.maxBytesPerSecond, which
specifies the maximum capacity of the NetStream at a given point in
time.
RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol) —
RTMFP provides a UDP-based secure network transport alternative to
RTMP-over-TCP. To take advantage of the feature you will need to
establish a net connection via future releases of Flash Media Server or
other Adobe server products. UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is an
efficient and standardized Internet protocol for delivering media
assets because of its support for lossy delivery, improving performance
of real time communication. RTMFP is always encrypted which helps
protect media delivery. This technology is a result of Adobe’s
acquisition of Amicima, Inc. in 2006. If you are interested in being
part of the private prerelease for RTMFP, please send an email to fmsprerelease@adobe.com with your contact details. See the RTMFP FAQ for more information about the new Real Time Media Flow Protocol feature in Flash Player 10.
Speex Audio Codec
— The new, higher fidelity Speex voice codec offers an alternative to
Nellymoser for audio that delivers the lowest-latency audio experience
possible. When RTMP or RTMFP is used with future releases of Flash
Media Server, live and unbuffered Speex transmissions will take
advantage of RTMFP's partial-reliability feature to reduce network
latency.
Return to feature list
Other Community Requested Enhancements
In
addition to the new creative expression, visual performance and rich
media features, Flash Player 10 includes a number of new features that
have been frequently requested by the community.
NSS for Linux – Flash Player 10 for Linux now supports Mozilla’s Network Security Services (NSS) for secure network connections. New in Aug 11 release
Linux WMODE
— Flash Player for Linux now supports windowless mode (transparent and
opaque). Windowless mode means proper blending between SWFs and the
HTML above and below the SWF content.. Windowless mode on Linux
requires the latest Firefox 3 to work.
Video4Linux v2 Support — Support for the Video4Linux v2 (V4L2) camera API has been added.
unloadAndStop
— This new ActionScript 3.0 API extends the Loader.unload API to help
unloaded content use zero CPU and potentially unload from memory. After
calling unloadAndStop on loaded content the player will attempt to stop
all playback of MovieClips (recursively), and remove references to as
many objects as possible (Sounds, NetStreams, EventListeners, etc.)
that were not cleaned up by the unloaded movie. This will make it far
more likely that the Garbage Collector will collect the memory used by
this loaded file. This is useful when unloading unknown 3rd party
content.
Limited Fullscreen Keyboard Access — In
Flash Player 10, key events are supported for non-printing keys such as
arrows, shift, enter, tab, space, etc. Limited access to the keyboard
will allow fullScreen games and video controls with keyboard access in
a secure way.
File Reference runtime access
— Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your
RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back
when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed
as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without
round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server
language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.
Dynamic Sound Generation
— Dynamic sound generation extends the Sound class to play back
dynamically created audio content through the use of an event listener
on the Sound object.
Large Bitmap Support — Flash
Player 10 now provides the ability to manipulate large bitmaps up to
16,777,216 pixels (4096 by 4096) with a maximum length of 8191 pixels
per side.
Context Menu — Developers now have more
control over what can be displayed in the context menu through the use
of ActionScript APIs for common text field context menu items,
supporting plain and rich text. The clipboard menu provides access to
the clipboard in a safe and controlled way, and you can write handlers
to paste text.
GB18030 Compliance — GB18030 is the
latest character set mandated by the Chinese government for displaying
text. Flash Player 10 compliance with this official character set
ensures support for all applications deployed on Flash Player that
require GB18030.
Ubuntu OS Support — Flash Player 10 now supports Ubuntu, one of the most popular flavors of Linux.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.html#features_rm