Adobe has published on
Adobe Labs two new betas, '
Flash Player 10.1 and
AIR 2.0.
Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is the first runtime release of the
Open Screen Project that enables uncompromised Web browsing of expressive applications, content and video across devices. For the moment, it is available for WIndows, Mac OS X, Linux and x86-based netbooks.
Smartphones and other mobile platforms aren't part of this beta version. But a beta is expected to be available for Palm webOS later this year.
Flash Player 10.1 supports hardware decoding of H.264 video on Windows platforms when running with supported hardware.
"H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. For more, click
here.
Adobe AIR 2.0 is also available for Windows, Linux et Mac OS X.
It integrates Flash Player 10.1 and some new features such as:
- Support for the detection of mass storage devices.
- Advanced networking capabilities like secure sockets, UDP support, and the ability to listen on sockets.
- Support for native code integration.
- Multi-touch and gesture support.
- etc. (complete list, click here)
The final version of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 are scheduled to be released in the first half of 2010.
If you want more information about Flash Player 10.1 click
here, and for AIR 2.0 click
there.
Edit: Oh well, here's a review that's actually quiet positive!
[quote]
In an early review of Flash Player 10.1, however, Anandtech still found significant improvements in CPU utilization under Mac OS X, dropping from 450% CPU load to 190% in viewing full-screen Hulu content on the Mac Pro used for testing.
Going from roughly 450% down to 190% (or a bit over 10% of total CPU utilization across 16 threads) made full-screen Hulu playable on my machine. In the past I always had to run it in a smaller window, but thanks to Flash 10.1 I don't have to any longer.
With actual GPU-accelerated H.264 decoding I'm guessing those CPU utilization numbers could drop to a remotely reasonable value. But it's up to Apple to expose the appropriate hooks to allow Adobe to (eventually) enable that functionality.
Until then, even OS X users have something to look forward to with the Flash 10.1 upgrade.
[/quote]