Adobe Releases AIR And Flash Player Betas

Adobe is taking a two pronged approach to Web-based media going forward. The company has discontinued support for Flash on Android, but AIR is a more than worthy successor for the mobile Web. Flash is still going strong on desktop as it powers the future of Web-based video and gaming. To help test the future of these two platforms, Adobe is pushing out betas to developers.

Adobe announced today that Flash Player 11.5 Beta and AIR 3.5 Beta are available to developers and consumers starting today. The releases, however, are more intended for developers who want to implement the latest features before the stable releases are pushed out.

First up, the AIR 3.5 beta adds support for Jelly Bean, and enhances iOS apps. The other major features are as follows:

Debug stack trace in release builds of Flash Player — This feature enables developers to display stack trace info in release and debug builds.

Packaging Multiple Binaries — This feature enables developers to include third party static libraries and frameworks and package these with ANE.

Shared ByteArray support for ActionScript Workers — This feature enables developers to share memory between multiple workers.

Packaging and loading multiple SWFs on iOS — This feature will allow developers to load multiple swfs, that contain ActionScript bytecode on iOS .

The Flash Player 11.5 beta is a bit more interesting. Adobe announced that Flash Player is now going into a rapid beta release cycle. Those who are subscribed to the new background update option will get the latest beta versions of Flash Player without having to life a finger. Here’s the major additions:

Shared ByteArray support for ActionScript Workers — This feature enables developers to share memory between multiple workers.

Debug stack trace in release builds of Flash Player — This feature enables developers to display stack trace info in release and debug builds.

You can grab the latest beta releases of Flash Player and AIR at their respective portals. It’s nice to see Adobe quickening the pace of development for Flash Player and AIR. HTML5 is quickly catching up to the kinds of tricks that Flash has had for years, and Adobe needs to stay ahead of the game to stay relevant. WIth continued releases and the additions of new features, Flash Player is going to be just fine.