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Flash player 10 is here: impressive performance, new features
I was fully prepared for Flash Player 10 to be totally underwhelming, but it looks as though Adobe has gotten things right this time around.
After looking at the beta back in July, the new features - 3d effects, hardware acceleration, custom filters and effects - intrigued me. I also noted a slight improvement in performance on my workstation. You can view a full list of v10's features on Adobe's web site and try out some of them in an interactive demo.
The 3d draggable DVD case demo is interesting, but far from a perfect illustration of the new capabilities. Take a few seconds and flip it, and you'll notice the cover reappearing on the back and sometimes the bottom edge of the case. I don't doubt that the effects will improve with time, and it's still a promising start.
I'd like to see a more practical demo of the custom filters than what Adobe offers. Call me crazy, but I don't see much use in being able to watch a video clip with a mosaic or spherize filter applied. In the three months between the beta and final release, I expected a demo with a bit more impact.
What I didn't expect was Flash Player 10 actually making my MSI Wind and its piddly Atom CPU capable of finally watching stutter-free FLV clips on the web. Thanks to the new dynamic streaming quality of service abilities and the general performance enhancements, playback is silky smooth even on my underpowered netbook.
Overall, v10 is impressive, and reminds me how exciting Flash was when it first burst onto the scene. It's well worth the download.
Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsRocketboyOct 15th 2008 12:39PM
I'd just be happy if they finally updated the flash player for embedded systems. I dream of the day I can use my Wii to use Hulu.
RizzleOct 15th 2008 2:44PM
The PS3 was updated to support Flash 9, which is a huge undertaking. I'm hopeful that the Wii will update to at least Flash 9.
The big hurdle is that Flash 9 and above use a completely different (but faster, better) virtual machine (AVM2) than Flash 8 and below (AVM1). AVM2 can understand "old Flash (written in Actionscript 2), as well as the new Actionscript 3 which is is object-oriented and generally awesome for developers.
Once they make the leap to AVM2, they should be able to keep up with updates (like Flash Player 10 which is still AVM2) much more easily
JamesOct 15th 2008 5:21PM
@Rizzle: I leapt to Google to deny your claim, but it turns out I'm a few days behind on PS3FB -- !!!! This is fantastic -- there's all kinds of web media I've been ignoring because I like to watch TV *on my TV*, and while I have an HDMI-capable laptop, I do not have a remote for it, so I'd have to jump off the couch and fiddle with the keyboard every time I want to pause something. The idea of watching, say, Hulu, on my TV, using my Bluray remote... awesome.
Jash SayaniOct 15th 2008 3:09PM
Lots of Adobe updates this year...
AIR 1.0 (Our of beta), CS 4 Suite, Flash 10....
Lee MathewsOct 15th 2008 3:10PM
And quality updates, too. Frankly, I'm getting a little scared.
What's next, a 64-bit Flash player? Hahahaha....Oh, my sides...
Ryan StewartOct 15th 2008 9:59PM
@Lee, you mean like this? - http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/08/random_blog_post.html
:)
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com
thielOct 15th 2008 7:20PM
I had been using the beta version, but too many websites kept telling me I was using an outdated version of Flash Player!
FirtchOct 16th 2008 3:09AM
Yeah, some of my "professional" sites like Vanguard and Yahoo Avatars still have the bug where they look for a 1-digit Flash version number and thin I'm using Flash version 1. Stupid. I have to downgrade just for that.
BrettOct 15th 2008 11:45PM
How's the memory footprint now? That's my only real flash complaint
QuikboyOct 16th 2008 1:08AM
So is it better than Silverlight now? Or not?
RayOct 21st 2008 1:55PM
I installed Flash Player 10 but it won't run?