Exciting Flash Player 10.1 Features
posted by: Robert Erskine on January 11th, 2010
Is anyone else excited for Flash Player 10.1?! I know I am. I’ve been following that gosh darn twitter and reading up on the latest features since the public “prerelease” on November 17, 2009, including the Adobe Max Web Conferences. There are a lot of new features on the way which will revolutionize the development of websites across multiple new hardware and mobile platforms alike.
The Support for New Platforms
With the release of 10.1 comes the support of a multitude of mobile devices, including; smartphones, netbooks, and other internet connected devices. Target mobile systems include (but are not limited to): Android 2.0, Microsoft Mobile 6.5, Palm webOS, Symbian S60 V5, as well as Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. (Notice the lack of “iPhone” on the list…)
The consistent flash player is expected to deliver the most productive experience to users across these new operating systems and devices. This consistency reduces the cost of creating, testing and deploying, essentially the complete essence of development, to such devices.
Designed for Mobility
Mobile text input – Support for native device virtual keyboards with the TextField or inputText is a must if no physical keyboard is detected for mobile devices. The focused text field is centered in the visible region of the screen medium as to not obscure the keyboard or a random event such as an incoming call or a rotation of orientation.
Screen Orientation– Exported SWF content can adjust to different screen parameters depending on orientation landscapes. That is from portrait to landscape, which is consistent with other built-in applications on the device.
Adaptive Frame Rate– Processing power is limited and very critical on these new mobile devices. Such a reason is why Flash Player now adapts to optimal frame rates to save CPU resources and available memory.
Accelerometer Input– Accelerometer’s are currently present in mobile phones and a wide variety of video game controllers such as the Nintendo Wii controllers. Accelerometer’s use direction on x, y, z coordinates to locate orientation of the device or provide for game input. Event information gives developers the option to change or re-manipulate the format or layout when reorientation occurs.
Sleep Mode– Probably most important, when the screen goes into sleep mode or power saving mode, the flash player slows down to preserve CPU and battery consumption on mobile devices. Also, whenever a phone call is received, the device will automatically pause the flash player.
Enhanced Browser Integration
Multi-touch and Gestures– User interaction is a key component of the latest hardware advances. Specifically in the new HP TouchSmart personal computers and laptops, native features such as pinch, scroll, rotate, scale, and two finger tap are a part of the every day user interface. Flash Developers can take advantage of this through ActionScript 3 API’s. This allows for the interaction of multiple items simultaneously or the multitude of native features.
Content Protection– Using industry-standard cryptography, Adobe Flash Access 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1 provides an ever-growing environment to protect a wide variety of content; whether it’s video on demand rental, electronic sell through, for streaming, or download.
What Does This All Mean for the Future of Flash Developers and Designers
I’m extremely excited for the multi-touch capabilities. Not only will these gestures work for touch-screen machines, but it will also work with components like the new Apple Mighty Mouse and the trackpad on new Macbooks.
There have also been a lot of improvements in the way the Flash Player runs that is going to allow the streaming of media and rendering of 3D content to boom in the future.
With that being said I think it is a fair guess to say that new media applications as well as advancements to current web trends are going to take place in the flash player. As an ActionScript and all things Flash junkie I am truly spasmodic about this 10.1 Flash Player Update.
