What's new in Flash Player 11

Adobe Flash Player 11 brings many improvements that will change the type of content you see on the web. Just like Flash Player 7 changed the web with the introduction of progressive video, or ActionScript 3 changed the way developers develop Flash content, Flash Player 11 brings the experience on the web to a whole different level, mainly with the introduction of 3D GPU acceleration, known as Stage 3D.

Below is a list of significant features introduced in Flash Player 11:

• Native 64-bit support (Flash Player desktop): Take advantage of native support for 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit web browsers on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
• Stage 3D accelerated graphics rendering: Stage 3D (formerly called "Molehill") is a new architecture for hardware-accelerated graphics rendering developed by Adobe. Stage 3D provides a set of low-level APIs that enable advanced 2D/3D rendering capabilities across screens and devices (desktop, mobile, and TV). It gives 2D and 3D app and framework developers access to high-performance GPU hardware acceleration, enabling the creation of new classes of rich, interactive experiences. (This release includes Flash Player and Adobe AIR desktop support; AIR for Android and iOS support will be enabled in a future prerelease build.)
• Adobe Flash Access content protection support for mobile: Flash Access content protection support is now available on mobile devices.
• H.264/AVC software encoding for cameras (desktop): Stream high-quailty video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry-wide support, enabling both immersive real-time communications (e.g., video chat and video conferencing) and live video broadcasts.
• Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) support: ActionScript developers can now take advantage of high-performance native parsing and generation of JSON-formatted data. Developers can integrate existing data seamlessly into their projects.
• G.711 audio compression for telephony: Support interoperability with legacy phone systems via the Flash Media Gateway (FMG) and other third-party clients (through the open RTMP protocol) without the need for transcoding.
• Garbage collection advice: Provide smoother, more responsive user experiences by allowing developers to provide hints (through System.pauseForGCIfCollectionImminent) to optimize garbage collection scheduling.
• Cubic Bézier curves: With the Graphics.cubicCurveTo drawing API, developers can easily create complex cubic Bézier curves without requiring custom ActionScript code.
• Secure random number generator: Developers can now take advantage of cryptographically secure random number generation to build more secure algorithms and protocols.
• Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and Flash Access enhancements: Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) provides protection for streaming video across screens while eliminating the deployment complexity of a license server. New Flash Access content protection features include key rotation support, V3 license chaining, domain support, and enhanced output protection and device filtering.
• TLS secure sockets support (new for Flash Player): Enable secure communications for client/server applications.
• Socket progress events: Improve management of data transfer using the Socket class by providing a new property to determine the number of bytes remaining in the write buffer and a new event for when data is being sent to the network layer. The new APIs (Socket.bytesPending, Event.OutputProgressEvent) allow applications to easily track progress and provide responsive feedback.
• Native text input UI (mobile): Mobile apps can now take advantage of the native text input controls on mobile platforms, including platform-specific user interaction behaviors such as magnification and text selection. Native text controls are available on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry Tablet OS.
• JPEG-XR support: Flash Player and AIR now include support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard (ISO/IEC 29199-2). The computationally lightweight JPEG-XR format provides more efficient compression than JPEG, enables both lossy and lossless compression support, and adds support for alpha channel transparency.
• Enhanced high-resolution bitmap support: BitmapData objects are no longer limited to a maximum resolution of 16 megapixels (16,777,215 pixels) and maximum bitmap width/height is no longer limited to 8,191 pixels, enabling the development of apps that utilize very large bitmaps.
• High-efficiency SWF compression support: Developers can now take advantage of LZMA compression for their SWF files. LZMA compression can reduce SWF size by up to 40 percent, enabling users to benefit from richer experiences with shorter download times and reduced bandwidth consumption. Use Tinic Uro's LZMA compression tool or a custom utility to compress your SWFs.
• DisplayObjectContainer.removeChildren and MovieClip.isPlaying: DisplayObjectContainer now implements a removeChildren API, allowing developers to remove all of a container's children quickly using a single API.
• Sound.loadCompressedDataFromByteArray and Sound.loadPCMFromByteArray: Developers can now inject compressed or raw PCM sound data into a Sound object to play sounds.
• Asynchronous bitmap decoding: Improve application responsiveness and deliver smoother animation by decoding images on initial load instead of on demand. Images are cached as needed.

Adobe Flash Player 11 is now available for download.