Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the
pre-release version of Adobe® Flash®
Player 10 software is now available in beta on Adobe Labs with new
expressive features for interactive designers and developers to build
richer and more immersive Web experiences. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta,
code named “Astro,”
builds on the capabilities of the world’s most
pervasive application runtime with new support for custom filters and
effects, native 3D transformation and animation, extensible rich text
layout and GPU hardware acceleration — helping
to enable a new level of cinematic experiences across multiple browsers
and operating systems.
“For over ten years Adobe has pushed the
limits of creativity and redefined rich interactive Web experiences with
Adobe Flash Player. Adobe has a long track record of creating
technologies that influence market direction and we believe this beta
release of Adobe Flash Player 10 raises the bar once again,”
said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform
Business Unit at Adobe. “Working closely with
the community, we are delivering groundbreaking creative features that
will be transformative for interactive designers and developers, and
revolutionary for end users.”
For the first time, Adobe is enabling the creation of custom filters and
effects that extend and can be combined with native effects in Adobe
Flash Player for unprecedented creative control of rich content to more
fully engage end users. Custom filters and effects are created with the
Adobe Pixel Bender™ toolkit, also available
for no charge on Adobe Labs. Adobe Pixel Bender is the same technology
behind many filters and special effects in Adobe After Effects®
CS3 software, the industry standard for creating motion graphics and
visual effects for film and broadcast. Developers targeting Adobe Flash
Player 10 beta can now create their own filters, blend modes and fills
with Adobe Pixel Bender by writing small pixel-shading functions that
can be parameterized to create animated effects or change the effect on
rich media content at runtime.
“One of the best things about the creative
features now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is that they won't
slow down performance,” said Grant Skinner,
CEO and chief architect of gskinner.com. “With
Flash Player 10 beta, developers can enable SWF content to render
through the memory bandwidth and computational horsepower of the GPU
hardware processor, freeing up the CPU to do more - such as render 3D
content and intricate effects, and process complex business logic. No
other browser runtime has these capabilities.”
Building on over 25 years of Adobe expertise with text, the highly
flexible new text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta provides
interactive designers and developers creative control over device font
attributes, such as anti-alias, rotation, and style as well as support
for ligatures. More text layout options, such as vertical,
bi-directional and right-to-left, will support the creation of RIAs in
more languages and can provide more interactive eBooks and online
publications that rely on Adobe Flash Player technology. Additionally,
new variable bitrate streaming for video between Adobe Flash Player 10
beta and intended future releases of Adobe Flash Media Server will
automatically adjust video quality as bandwidth availability fluctuates
to provide constant video playback without pausing to buffer,
dramatically improving end user experiences. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta
also introduces native support for 3D effects to easily position, rotate
and animate 2D objects while retaining interactivity.
“The 3D effects and transformations now
available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta enable developers to get started
quickly with 3D,” said Ralph Hauwert, owner
of UnitZeroOne and a Core Developer of Papervision 3D. “For
interactive designers and developers well-versed in creating 3D
experiences, the revamped drawing API and Pixel Bender language will
enable an entirely new depth of graphics unseen on the Web today.
Interactive designers and developers will be able to create movie-like
experiences, with special effects that before weren't possible on the
Web.”
Adobe Flash Player delivers unparalleled creative options, highly
engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and virtually
universal reach across operating systems. Adobe Flash Player content
reaches more than 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops. Adoption of
the previous update to Adobe Flash Player 9, which supports
H.264-enabled HD content, set all-time records by achieving 62 percent
market penetration in less than three months. More than 75 percent of
broadcasters who stream video on the Web use Flash technology.
Innovations introduced in the beta release of Adobe Flash Player 10 will
be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR™
and will contribute to future work on the Open Screen Project, which is
dedicated to delivering a consistent runtime environment across personal
computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. More information
about the Open Screen Project is available at www.openscreenproject.org.
Pricing and Availability
The pre-release version of Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is available
immediately as a free download from Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/astro.
To find out more about Adobe Flash Player 10 beta and to see
demonstrations of new effects and capabilities, visit www.adobe.com/go/flashplayer10_demos.
Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is offered for Windows Vista®,
Windows® XP, Windows Server®
2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X, and Linux®
operating systems. The Adobe Pixel Bender Exchange is now available for
community members to create custom effects for Adobe Flash Player 10
beta at www.adobe.com/go/pixelbender.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information –
anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
© 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights
reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, After Effects, Adobe AIR, Flash and
Pixel Bender are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe
Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Mac
and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the United States
and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
in the U.S. and other countries. Windows, Windows Server, and Windows
Vista are either the registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
