Many of you probably already know but Flash Player 10 beta has just been released on Adobe Labs. This is a very exciting release of the player. Features include:
3D Effects – Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.
Custom Filters and Effects – Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe® Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
Advanced Text Layout – 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 offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.
Enhanced Drawing API – Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.
Other things that you will want to check out –
Flex SDK to Develop for Flash 10
Flash 10 Demo and Videos
Flash 10 Beta Full Release Notes (This is all the good stuff that is not in the marketing Fluff)
Flash 10 Bug Report
* Warning* – Installing Flash 10 Player may hamper your current Flash/Flex development and testing.
Thanks and as always – Happy Flashing
Curtis J. Morley