As you have undoubtedly noticed by now, we’ve been updating the Flash Player and AIR runtimes with increased frequency.  In fact, we’re moving to a new (roughly) quarterly update schedule for the runtimes that we hope will deliver huge advances across the web in a very short time.

Why?  I guess there are a number of reasons, the most interesting one is mobile investments bringing new fruit and HTML beginning to take more of the weight.  If you remember, during the 18months when Flash Player 10.1 was launching we received a lot of feedback that we were over-committed to mobile in general.  I think unfortunately the word didn’t get out that these investments were much broader than just mobile devices.   It was a ground up effort to enable the Flash Platform to support sweeping changes in the way media is composed, rendered, protected and analyzed.

Looking at the world through Tomi Ahonen’s eyes, you can see that a growing majority of web access is now on mobile devices.  That is, if you include the numbers of people using mobile only and mobile or desktop devices.  Of course these devices require new tools, new ideas and new content that runs effectively – it’s time for a shift in thinking.

Historically this is actually a pattern of advances on the web if you look at Flash releases, maybe some of you recognized it?

• Flash 1 – Vector Graphics Support
• Flash 3 – MovieClips, loadMovie
• Flash 6 – AS1, XML, Video, Unicode, Drawing API, events, AMF
• Flash 9 – AS3, H.264, JIT Compiler, E4X, Binary Sockets
• Flash 11 – Full 3D etc

Note: I’m not attempting to be precise here, it’s just a pattern that describes the general points where the Platform has evolved over time.  There are obviously matching HTML/Jscript/CSS advances to match, all of which make the wheels of the web go round.

So in our efforts to drive web innovation, and take the Flash Platform to new places, let’s look at the current and upcoming Flash Player releases.

Flash Player 10.2

New Features include:

• StageVideo support, pushing decoding and screen blitting of H.264 video via the GPU.  This is actually a feature that comes from the Digital Home investments, and in fact Flash Lite on Nokia phones rendered video in much the same way.
• Complete Hardware rendering path on IE9
• Native Mouse Cursors, enabling richer gaming experiences

StageVideo should now be included in all situations where you are presenting video.  It’s automatically enabled on mobile and Digital Home devices, but on the desktop it’s not always possible to use this method.  Get started with StageVideo today.

Many of you have noticed that Flash Player 10.2 has yet to launch on mobile, for which there are number of reasons.  Those are quite obvious really, it’s just much more complicated to ship on mobile phones and tablets.  In addition, we’re targeting the new Android 3.0.1 release from Google as well, a platform that brings fresh features and challenges.

That said, Flash Player 10.2 is expected to ship on Android in two days time.

Flash Player 10.3

Already fast on the heels of 10.2 is a desktop beta version of the next Flash Player to launch.  This is actually on the most exciting releases for some time because it delivers new features, many of which are driven by the community.

New Features include:

• Media Measurement
• Acoustic Echo Cancellation
• Integration with browser privacy control for local storage
• Native Control Panel
• Auto-Update Notification for Mac OS

With these new additions, the community will be able to create incredible VOIP applications in the browser.  One of the missing items for those applications was Echo Cancellation, essentially processing of the Microphone inputs so that you won’t need a headset.  I’m certainly going to use this for my Radar application.

Another nice new feature is the native control panel, this will make Flash feel more integrated into the Desktop or device experience.  Finally we can get rid of the horrible SWF based settings manager on Adobe.com, something that confused even me.  Users will be able to control their own security and experience much more easily, as well as make the best of Browser security.

Media Measurement is going to be great for our Omniture customers, enabling them to analysis content playback much more easily.  Let’s face it, it’s a feature for monetization, but that’s always good.  Last year over 128Billion Megabytes were streamed through Flash Player, that’s 100% growth.  So with this feature our customers will be able to get a much broader view of what’s going on during playback, helping to improve and monetize those experiences.

You can download the beta today.

Flash Player Inclubator

As you read above, this is part of our ongoing efforts to seed the community with bleeding edge technology.  I like to think of it this way, HTML will be taking care of some of those slideshow and simpler web experiences, micro-sites, product data and maybe some basic video playback.  This isn’t something that scares me, in fact it’s completely the opposite.  Lets face it, the more HTML can take on, the more new innovations we can deliver with Flash.

I find the whole HTML5 and Flash argument quite amusing, anyone that’s old enough to remember how the web evolved will recognise that Flash was successful because it solved problems for our customers.  So it makes sense (and it’s exciting) that it will evolve to solve new problems as HTML catches up, and we’re helping those technologies catch up.

New Features:

• All of Flash Player 10.3
• 3D Rendering Pipeline “Molehill”
• more to come

Interestingly, the StageVideo api enables play back video on a hardware surface using an OpenGL (ES2.0)/Direct3D shader API to convert from YUV to RGB.  It shouldn’t take you long to realise that Molehill uses the same apis for 3D rendering, thus enabled by Stagevideo.

Flash is so widely distributed now that we don’t have the option to simply cut off those users without GPUs or the correct drivers.  So for these users we have a seamless fallback to a new component called SwiftShader, a Transgaming product of which Adobe is a licensee.

You can see some of the incredible work underway below:

Developer and/or Browser War

(Personal Opinion)

Finally, in case some of you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of a browser war.  Each of the major players (including Adobe) are working incredibly hard to drive innovation on the web, adding new features, increasing performance and fighting for territory.

This has unfortunately led to some adverse press attention being poured on Flash, one of the most talked about technologies of the past year.  What’s important here is that we all keep a level head, listen to customers concerns, but always consider someones motivation for targeting Flash to gain press attention.

Example One

• March 11th – Mozilla, “Flash is Dead” (two days prior they released an RC build of Firefox 4),
• March 14th – Microsoft launches IE9 with hardware accelerated Flash integration as a feature

Example Two

• April 27th – Google
• April 29th – Apple

Net is, Flash is a product made successful by those who use it – that’s probably you.  It’s not just a pile of 1′s and 0′s, it’s a complete ecosystem that is largely, and most successfully, presented within HTML  It’s success has been driven by the Flash community creating incredible millions of pieces of content over the past decade, enabling online business and entertainment to thrive.

I have no doubt that HTML5 is going to be great for all of us, that includes Flash developers who will be free to create even more advanced forms of content on even more screens.  That’s why I believe that Flash is the innovation engine for the web and digital experiences, the use cases may well change – but the reason for Flash existing won’t.

Last week we published a new Facebook SDK for creating Flash and AIR applications that incorporate Facebook connectivity using their new Open Graph API.  The design of their API is really great and uses Open Authentication version 2.0, so it’s easier than ever to connect your applications – and help them go viral.

Creating an application couldn’t be simpler, just go to this link and fill in the details to retrieve your Application ID.  You’ll only need that to connect your new application.

Admittedly I was a little surprised to see that AIR on Android wasn’t supported, although the full source is published and so it was easy to start adapting it for use on Android.  In the video above you can see how simple it is to connect your applications.

Below you can download the full source and step through the application.  Maybe you can add a feature that supports status updates?

FaceCard Download

FacebookMobile Download

Radar

In addition, I have been adding support for Facebook and Twitter connectivity to my Radar application – currently available on the Android Market.  This application has become much more complex as a result, but I think it’s now looking really great.

You can download the application on the Android Market, or for the Desktop here.  If you are feeling brave then you can find the source for this application below.

Radar Source Download

A few weeks ago I published a video demonstrating the amazing P2P features in AIR2.x, running on the desktop and on Android devices. Well I have been hard at work improving this application and making it robust enough to show here in India at the Flash Platform Summit.

The result is a pretty complex application that enables users to establish P2P video calls. I have used Google Maps in 3D mode and added Gesture support, Twitter for Authentication and a completely new API.

As promised, here is the source for you to download.  Remember that Tom Krcha is our P2P and FMS expert, so make sure that you keep up-to-date on his blog for more elaborate uses of P2P.

DOWNLOAD

We receive literally millions of requests at our Adobe.com pages from iPhone OS users looking for a Flash Player download.

Given our support from the top 19/20 OEMs across multiple device platforms we thought it prudent to provide “more info” to those poor iPhone users that got stuck with a limited browsing experience.

Hope you like it

As some of you have seen me tweet (@markadoherty) last week I received a new phone the HTC Hero.  The devices comes in a few different colours, but I got the white version simply because it’s got Teflon coating.  The device itself is pretty resistant to scratches and greasy paws on the screen, a life in my pocket isn’t easy

Summary

Build quality for the Hero is outstanding, the device is light but feels really solid to hold.  As many of you have heard me bleat previously buttons are always a big giveaway when it comes to quality.  If a button rocks in it’s bezel, or has a poor action you can tell that it’s not designed to last.  With the Hero there’s no issues with any of the front facing buttons, the volume control on the side could have been toughened up.

The screen quality is great, it’s sharp and bright right to the corners and sports 320×480 pixels with multi-touch support.  I’ve found it to be highly responsive and accurate, and with the accelerometers I can type in portrait and landscape mode very easily.  In the screenshot above you can see the rich SenseUI provided by HTC, everything on the screen is customizable because they are either Widgets or shortcuts.

Flash is like the cherry on the top for the HTC Hero, bringing a huge volume of web media to an already fantastic device and platform.  Despite a few glitches I think HTC are on to a winner with this device, and really have demonstrated that their finger is on the “social” pulse.

Widgets

The clock and weather Widget also displays my current locale and automatically determines the weather, this changes as I move around London and so is really accurate.

If I swipe my finger left or right from the Home Screen I can move to other spaces, in each of these I can add new widgets to personalise the experience.  You can see in the screenshots above that I have added my SMS/MMS messages, a Stocks Widget and some quick links for Web browsing.  The widgets are updating using very simple Android Widget framework, which is fully customizable.  So I can inform the Twitter Widget to update every 4 hours rather than every 5mins (which is the default and had my account suspended).

Web Browsing

As far as mobile browsing goes Android has from v1 been able to deliver a great experience for end users.  It’s based on the open source Webkit browser with some modifications for performance and to tailor it to run well on Android’s UI framework.  Currently it does not support HTML5 but it does have Location support, which is a great boon to tailoring searches for mobile devices.  In fact it borrows the same location technology as Google Maps, so there’s no need for GPS.

Flash on Android

Of course the feature that’s most important to me is the support for Flash on Android, in fact it’s the first Android device to support the Flash Player.  With such a high resolution 3.2″ multi-touch screen you’ll notice that Flash fits particularly well in this form factor.  As with some later Nokia devices it’s now possible to view multimedia content made available by various content sites using Flash today.

Sites like Yahoo Movies, Youtube and various games sites can now provide mobile experiences designed to work with mobile screen sizes. Using the pinch and zoom functionality of the device a user can easily navigate around.  In the image above you can see a video that started to playback automatically to promote a new movie.  I should point out that while annoying at times, this is also how the business model for the site works (there was no audio btw).

If you want to watch a video or play a game in full screen mode you can simply double tap on the content and it will playback in full screen mode.  You can see in the screenshots above the trailer for the new movie Orphan playing back in full screen mode, and in windowed mode also.  Also shown above is the BBC’s iPlayer showing a few videos in the carousel.  Now I should point out that iPlayer doesn’t work in the browser because the desktop video file was 627mb.

I have noticed a few browser crashes, and interestingly my Google start page is the usual culprit.  Wonder if it’s the location feature?

Social Networks

One of the great features of the HTC Hero, and I suppose the Android OS is the ability to “do what you want”.  HTC have nailed the principle that phones are social devices, yes they help us communicate but they also enable us to organize our busy lives like never before.  With the Hero, Facebook and Twitter have been built right into the platform with full contacts integration.

During the setup of the device the application will automatically try and match your phone contacts with Facebook and other Social networks.  This can be a little bit of a hassle if you have hundreds of contact, but it’s well worth the time and the suggestions are pretty good.  An example of where it goes wrong is that SIM cards only hold a single name string, not first and last name and there’s no way to know that “Mum” = “Margaret Doherty” on Facebook.

As you can see each contact can be linked from my address book (“People”) to their Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts. I’ve opted to not use Flickr because I don’t use it for Photos, and prefer to get updates from Facebook for that. It’s a personal choice though and I’m sure many people would like updates across the board.

Exchange Support – Fail

As you can see Exchange support wasn’t such a great experience, because as it turns out the Hero doesn’t support installation of SSL Certificates.  At Adobe we use a corporate SSL certificate for mobile devices to ensure that each device has been setup by a known employee.  The benefits of the certificate and installation are numerous and it’s a pretty standard corporate IT policy.  On this front therefore “Exchange support” is a fail and a real pity as everything else works perfectly.  I seriously wonder how they got this so wrong?

Exchange Support via Moxier

Without Exchange support the HTC Hero would never have been my personal phone but for a company called Moxier.  It was well known that MS Exchange support was not a strategic priority for Google, and while that makes sense it’s great to see that Android is open enough for others to build a business around these opportunities.

Moxier, DataViz RoadSync and Roadrunner have been created to fill this gap and today Moxier ($29.99) fits my requirements and includes SSL support.  RoadSync would have been my choice but for the lack of SSL support and the great UI, support and 10 second installation and setup was nothing short of perfect.

Included are Calendar, Email, Sync and Contacts support including access to the Global Address List so that I can look up other employees easily.  I’ve also found that the Calendar is pretty well thought out, particularly the agenda view shown above where I can see the next meetings coming up.

What you might notice is that my Agenda is pretty light on meetings, and that’s where problems have started to show.  As it turns out some meetings are not synchronising correctly, most notably those with timezone offsets and that’s pretty common for me given my position.

In all it’s pretty good but an industrial strength solution is required for enterprise customers, missing appointments would make me look bad.  Saying that, it’s better than nothing and I’ve reported the bugs so let’s hope the developer is spending my $30 wisely

Next Post

My next post is going to be all about my investigation into getting Flash standalone applications to work.  I’ve been “fiddling” with the Android SDK and so far I’ve managed to start Flash independently and load the File Picker.

Hopefully I’ll complete the investigation tomorrow!!

Today I was holding an analyst briefing here in London on our Digital Home Platform, and on the way to the office I spotted the advert above for the HTC Hero. The launch of the device will happen on the Orange network here first, but there’s an interesting addition in the marketing.

As you can see “with Adobe Flash Player for an enhanced online experience” represents basically the only feature other than the tariff. So in itself Flash support has become a marketable feature item, that’s great progress for the Flash Platform.

I believe this is the first time that we’ve seen this with mobile phone advertising, so keep your eyes out for more of this!

You will have noticed a lot of blogging and press around the announcement of the Google Chrome open operating system. Google have been working on Chrome for quite a long time now, creating one of the fastest and most stable browsers available.  I’d like see it on my mac sometime soon, and it looks like it’s not far off considering the beta quality.

There have been many indications of course that Chrome would ultimately be the resident Android browser, and so bringing it to ARM based netbooks looks to me like the first indication of mobile support.  So I’d guess that we’re about a year away from seeing it on Android for the first time.  The big question is why Android wasn’t confirmed as the OS, and I don’t have an answer for that.

As we all know many of Google’s key properties like Youtube, Google Video, Street View and platforms like Android all use Flash to deliver a richer web experience.  So it’s great to see Google updated their blog with an FAQ naming Adobe as a partner in this new venture.  Of course we’re pretty much good to go once these devices start to role out whatever the OS and device.

There’s no doubt that we’re seeing something pretty special here, netbooks have become a very common sight in the past year. I see people using them on trains, at the airport and on their holidays to keep up with emails and plan their trip on the go.  Though it could be that the developing world moves from Internet via their mobile phones straight to netbooks, which are of course less expensive, demand less power and are built on free and open software stacks.

Very interesting times, and of course a whole new raft of opportunities for web developers and the Flash Platform.