Adobe Intros Flash Player 10 Beta

May 14th, 2008 at 3:00 PM - News by Jeff Gamet

Adobe unveiled a public beta of Flash Player 10 on Thursday. The beta, code named "Astro," added support for user-implemented custom effects and filters, animation effects, native 3D transformation, and GPU-based rendering.

Atrois real-time image effects.

Astro sports variable bitrate video streaming to help avoid stuttering or stalling during playback, and can apply 3D effects to 2D objects without losing interactivity.

Grant Skinner, CEO and chief architect of the Flash development firm gskinner.com, commented "One of the best things about the creative features now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is that they wonit slow down performance."

Astrois new text engine will give interactive designers far more control over device font attributes, including anti-alias, rotation, style effects, and ligatures. It also supports bi-directional and right-to-left text.

Along with its new 3D, performance, and interactive features, Astro maintains features introduced in Flash Player 9 like H.264-HD support. Adobe also plans to incorporate features from Astro into Adobe AIR.

The Flash Player 10 public beta is free and available for download at the Adobe Labs Web site.