WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
Adobe announced its Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 releases, which it said will enable “the next generation of immersive application experiences across devices and platforms including Android, Apple iOS (via AIR), BlackBerry Tablet OS, Mac OS, Windows, connected TVs and other platforms.”
Adobe is positioning Flash/AIR as a tool for developers to create cross-platform content and apps, against a backdrop of growing support for HTML5 as a tool to do the same.
In a statement, the company said that “dozens of new features…allow developers to deliver a new class of gaming and premium video experiences, as well as sophisticated, data-driven applications with back-end systems integration across devices, including iPhone and iPad via AIR.”
Likely to be of interest to mobile developers will be “AIR Native Extensions,” which will enable apps built with the Adobe technology to access device features including vibration control, magnetometers, light sensors, dual-screens, NFC and others. This will also enable developers to more deeply integrate AIR apps with “other business software.”
The update includes support for accelerated 2D and 3D graphics, which can enable “1,000 times faster rendering performance” over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2. Currently this is in a “pre-release” stage for mobile devices, with Adobe stating that “a production release for mobile platforms is expected in the near future.”
Developers can also package the AIR runtime with applications, in order to simplify the installation process for platforms including Android, Windows and Mac OS, in addition to iOS. This will remove the need for AIR to be installed separately, as is currently the case.
Mobile social gaming company GREE said that it will become “one of the first companies to adopt the latest version of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.” It said that “starting this fall,” it will begin formally offering the AIR 3 plugin to its development partners, enabling them to “easily embed the functions provided by the GREE SDK into AIR-based applications.”
The technologies will be publicly available early next month. Flash Builder and Flex, the company’s open-source framework for building mobile, web and desktop apps, will offer support for the new features in an upcoming release “before the end of the year.”
