Flash Player 10 Beta
Yesterday the 10th version of the Adobe Flash Player codenamed “Astro” became available on Adobe Labs. Looking back to the release of version 9, which was a development release introducing AVM2 and AS3 and version 8, which was a feature release providing pixel filters and so on now version 10 is well balanced between features and development.
The list of new key features is quite impressive: 3D Effects, Custom Filters and Effects , Advanced Text Layout, Enhanced Drawing API and Visual Performance Improvements.
With the new 3D-Effects one is able now to rotate 2D-Shapes in a 3D coordinate system. This will boost frameworks like Papervison and so on to the next level for sure.
Next, the custom filters and effects are slaping into my face. They are arriving in time as i am thinking about how to manipulate designs on shirts in away that make them look more realistic in product previews. The custom filters saved my day and i can not wait to play around with them. Watch Justin Everett-Church demonstrate custom filters and effects
The advanced Text Layout is a blessing for Flash developers. How often have i heard: “We are not using Flash for {insert heavily text based application} cause the user will not even be able to simply copy and paste or navigate the text and the content team has to consider to much restrictions.” Well, they are right in some points but with the new Text Layout these excuses are not accepted any longer 
What also sounds good is the new drawing API. It is promised to get rid of this annoying moveTo() - lineTo() - moveTo(). In fact i have not seen the new API in the wild yet so i can not state if there will be a significant improvement but i trust the Adobe guys and really looking forward to get it on my fingertips.
Last important thing to mention: PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS!!! Well at least theoretical. The new Flash Player shifts graphics operations from the CPU over to the GPU which frees the CPU from computing display effects and offers more cycles on crunching numbers for the application logic. It may be a naive assessment of the situation but downloading the FP 10 Beta and visiting papervision3d.org seems to understress my Mac now.
Beside these features a lot of minor improvements like dynamic video playback are made. Have a look at the release notes to get the full list. By looking down that list you may discover two features that are mentioned far to rawly in the common blog posts: RTMFP and File Reference runtime access.
RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol) brings P2P capabilities to the Flash Player. It is hidden by Adobe itself beneath the “Video Streaming Umbrella”, which surely makes sense for marketing purposes but in fact it has much larger impact. Hank Williams have been doing some extended thinking around the possibilities. While i am not sure if what he outlines will be possible, it’s certainly intriguing thoughts
File Reference runtime access - a feature eagerly awaited by lots of Flash developers. I was often worried about bypassing the limitations and upload local content in the background to let the user manipulate it inside the application. Loading and saving files at runtime without without thinking about server roundtrips. With immediate effect i think about letting the user modify their designs they want on their shirts and upload them if they are satisfied or store product previews on their machines.
I am curious about how fast the new version will spread as if it is final. I think especially for ecommerce sites this is a huge opportunity to get their products presented in a way that can make up a great online shopping experience.
Earlier that that day a note reached me about the first tutorial for creating FP10 content. As there is no tooling available yet the tutorial relies on the nightly build of MXMLC which is the Flex compiler.
Start playing around and contribute!
Best,
Frank