WebProNews

Tag: Adobe Flash Player

  • Want Extended Support For Flash Player? Update To Version 11.7

    Want Extended Support For Flash Player? Update To Version 11.7

    Not everybody can update to the latest and greatest versions of software all the time. That’s especially true for those in work settings when it comes to software like Flash or Java. In the case of the former, the extended support release was set to version 10.3, but users will have to upgrade soon.

    Adobe announced this month that all Flash users must upgrade to version 11.7 if they wish to continue receiving extended support. You have until July 9 to upgrade.

    Here’s why Adobe figures you’ll want to upgrade to the latest version of Flash:

    Flash Player 11.7 provides exciting new features, including Actionscript concurrency, webcam support for StageVideo and more. It also enables Protected Mode for FireFox on Windows, a sophisticated security-in-depth feature. With Protected Mode, Flash Player runs as restricted process, making it more difficult for attackers to build working exploits. Flash Player 11.7 leverages hardware acceleration for audio, video and rendering to increase performance and lower CPU usage.

    It’s important that you update to the latest version of Flash Player. Without it, your organization will miss out on the frequent security updates that Adobe pushes to patch security holes in its software. Flash, alongside Java, are some of the easiest Web plugins to exploit.

    To grab the latest version of Flash, hit up the official Adobe support site. From there, you can also grab a variety of tools, including debuggers.

  • Unity Game Engine to End Flash Support

    It appears that Apple has been right all along that Flash is not the future of the web. Unity this week announced that it will be phasing out support for Adobe Flash development.

    Unity is a multi-platform game engine that is capable of producing games for consoles, PCs, touch devices, and the web. In particular, the engine has been used to create some of the most popular mobile games in recent years, such as Rovio’s Bad Piggies.

    David Helgason, CEO of Unity, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the company has stopped selling Flash development licenses.

    Unity will continue to support its existing Flash customers “throughout the 4.x cycle.” Bug fixes will be made in future Unity 4.x iterations, but further development for the Unity engine on the platform has ceased.

    The decision was made, Helgason stated, because of Adobe. Helgason called recent versions of Flash unstable and stated that, “We don’t see Adobe being firmly committed to the future development of Flash.” He also pointed out that Adobe has cancelled the Flash Player Next project.

    Instead of Flash, Unity will be concentrating its development on its own Unity Web Player. Helgason stated that the Unity Web Player is installed on over 200 million computers and is used by one-third of all “Facebook gamers.”

  • Flash Player 11.7, AIR 3.7 Introduce New Features And Tools

    Flash Player 11.7, AIR 3.7 Introduce New Features And Tools

    Adobe continues its tireless march of improving its software with new updates being released for both Flash Player and AIR today.

    First, Flash Player is now up to version 11.7. The latest version introduces better security “through sandboxing enhancements.” The Flash Player team has also fixed “high priority bugs, and issues that were reported by our community and partners.”

    In other Flash news, Adobe recently previewed the next version of Flash Professional codenamed “hellcat.” The main takeaway is that the next version of Flash Professional will be built for x64 architectures, and it will be “10 times faster” than Flash Professional CS6.

    AIR received a pretty sizable update as it made the move to version 3.7. The mobile development suite introduces the following features:

    …we are introducing exciting features such as captive runtime debugging capabilities for android apps; which let developers create and debug their Android apps quickly and easily. We are also excited to introduce the capability to force CPU Render-mode on some iOS devices. Using this feature, a developer can turn on CPU rendering for specific iOS devices, and utilize GPU rendering for others.

    You can grab Flash Player 11.7 here, and AIR 3.7 here.

  • Learn How To Use Stage3D In Flash 11

    Learn How To Use Stage3D In Flash 11

    Flash 11 introduced a new development architecture called Stage3D that allows developers to bring “stunning visuals across desktop browsers and iOS and Android apps enabling advanced 2D and 3D capabilities.” The technology allowed one creator to make some incredible interactive projects.

    Peter Shand cooperated with three organizations – RESN, Circul8 and Imagination – in 2012 to create various interactive video projects using Flash 11, Stage3D and other technologies. The results are exceptional:

    To pull this off, Shand worked with Flash 11’s Stage3D and its Away3D library. The Away3D library is a free resource for Flash developers, and it can be used to create rich and immersive interactive experiences like the ones you see above.

    Away3D is part of the Adobe Gaming SDK that was released last year, which includes Starling, Feathers and, of course, Away3D. To learn more about implementing Away3D, check out this tutorial from Away 3D co-founder Rob Bateman:

    Another integral tool is the Starling 2D framework that allows developers to create hardware accelerated content. To learn more about Starling, check out this tutorial series that goes into how Starling can be used to create a game from start to finish:

    If you want to get started on Adobe Flash development, especially for games, Adobe offers a free trial for its game developer tools on Creative Cloud.

  • Google Makes Flash For Chrome More Secure

    Information security while browsing the web has always been a concern, especially with all of the information that we share on the web nowadays. With this premise, the search engine giant’s mainstream web browser Google Chrome has recently been released with improvements regarding the way that it handles its security performance, including the way it handles the Adobe Flash Player. More information on the new security updates Chrome has integrated can be read here.

    According to the Google Chrome Blog, Google has been working with Adobe since 2010 to sandbox their Flash player in an efforts to protect its users from malicious software (malware). With this update, Google’s browser now contains a new plug-in architecture that places Flash (for Windows users) in a sandbox as strong as the main sandbox for Chrome.

    Viet-Trung Luu, Software Engineer for Google Chrome exclaims the following statement regarding the Adobe Flash update for Chrome:

    We take the security of Chrome extremely seriously, so we’re excited to be delivering these enhanced protections, and we’ve enjoyed collaborating with Adobe on this effort.