Now that MAX 2011 Conference is started, Adobe just launched the Flash Player 11 and AIR 3. Take a look at the features introduced by each of them.

Flash Player 11 features

• Native 64-bit support (Flash Player desktop)
• Stage 3D accelerated graphics rendering
• Adobe Flash Access content protection support for mobile
• Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) support
• G.711 audio compression for telephony
• Garbage collection advice
• Cubic Bézier curves
• Secure random number generator
• Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and Flash Access enhancements
• TLS secure sockets support (new for Flash Player)
• Socket progress events
• Native text input UI (mobile)
• JPEG-XR support
• Enhanced high-resolution bitmap support
• High-efficiency SWF compression support
• DisplayObjectContainer.removeChildren and MovieClip.isPlaying
• Sound.loadCompressedDataFromByteArray and Sound.loadPCMFromByteArray
• Asynchronous bitmap decoding

Test if you have Flash Player 11 installed here: http://blogs.adobe.com/sunil/2011/10/04/test/.

Get Adobe Flash Player 11 from here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

If you look for the debugger version of Flash Player 11 go to this link: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

AIR 3 features

• Stage3D (desktop only)
• Native extensions (all platforms)
• Android Market licensing integration (Android only, obviously)
• Captive runtime bundles (Android and desktop)
• Background audio playback (new feature in iOS; already works on Android)
• CameraRoll support for iPad
• Hardware-accelerated video (mobile)
• Native text fields (mobile)
• Front-facing camera support (iOS and Android)
• Mobile-encrypted local storage (brings feature parity between desktop and mobile)
• Device speaker control (mobile)
• Native JSON support (mobile and desktop)
• Socket improvements (mobile and desktop)
• H.264 video encoding (desktop only)
• JPEG XR support (mobile and desktop)
• Higher resolution bitmaps (mobile and desktop)
• Multichannel audio digital output (AIR for TV only)
• Advanced controller support (AIR for TV only)
• More easily removing all children from a container (all platforms)
• More easily determine if a MovieClip is playing (all platforms)
• Secure random number generation (mobile and desktop)
• Support for cubic bezier curves (all platforms)

Get Adobe AIR 3 from here: http://get.adobe.com/air/

The features were only listed. Read more bellow to find put more about each feature…
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/10/adobe-flash-player-11-air-11-available-later-today.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/whats-new-flash-player11.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/air3_whatsnew.html

In about 20 minutes the keynote of Adobe Max 2011 Conference will start. Access it live at http://max.adobe.com/online/keynote/.

What is Adobe MAX?

Adobe MAX is the place where technology and artistry converge. If you are a designer, developer, or a business decision-maker, join us for the year’s most exciting exchange of ideas and inspiration.

Enjoy the Adobe MAX 2011 Conference!

Adobe believes in hiring the very best. We are known for our vibrant, dynamic and rewarding workplace where personal and professional fulfillment and company success go hand in hand. We take pride in creating exceptional work experiences, encouraging innovation and being involved with our employees, customers and communities. We invite you to discover what makes Adobe such a great place to work.

Job description

Recognizing that employees are at the core of our success, Adobe recruits and retains highly qualified and motivated individuals creates an environment where they can innovate and achieve their best, and rewards them for their performance by giving them an opportunity to share in the company’s success.

Send your resume to: hr-romania@adobe.com.

Position summary

On this job, you will:

• Work in a great team of engineers
• Be responsible for analyzing, designing, programming, debugging and modifying for web applications enhancements and production
• Contribute on orchestrating rich interactions experience for web applications
• Apply the latest RIA technologies for building the next generation of web
• May interact with users to define requirements and/or necessary modifications

Requirements:

• Experience in client-side development (ActionScript, Flex, Flash, GWT, Java FX or HTML/ Javascript)
• Hands on experience with ActionScript or Flex
• Good knowledge of RIA concepts
• Familiar with design patterns and web application architectures
• Up-to-date with the latest web trends and technologies
• Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly – technophile loves tinkering and is self-motivated to learn new things
• Familiarity with Web 2.0, HTML 5 concepts is a bonus
• B.S. or M.S. degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent
• Good written and verbal communication skills
• Spoken and written English proficiency.

Bonuses & benefits

We offer the opportunity to build a career in a rapidly expanding software company, working with international technology groups. Excellent benefits package including Stock Options Plan, Medical and Life insurance, and more.

Adobe believes personal fulfillment and company success go hand in hand, sustaining one another. In fact, our dynamic, rewarding working environment is well known – including eight years on FORTUNE magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” and other, similar accolades. By hiring the very best and brightest, Adobe continues to be a simply better place to work – creating a dynamic environment today and providing incentives for future achievement.

About Adobe

Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information. For 25 years, the company’s award-winning software and technologies have redefined business, entertainment, and personal communications by setting new standards for producing and delivering content that engages people virtually anywhere at any time. From rich images in print, video, and film to dynamic digital content for a variety of media, the impact of Adobe solutions is evident across industries and felt by anyone who creates, views, and interacts with information. With a reputation for excellence and a portfolio of many of the most respected and recognizable software brands, Adobe is one of the world’s largest and most diversified software companies.

Adobe’s office in Romania serves as a Research and Development center and focuses on improving Adobe products such asDreamweaver, AMP, Flex and AIR and researching related web technologies. The center also provides Adobe with greater access to the business community and the expertise in the growing Eastern European market.
You will find here passionate, exceptional and unique individuals who use their skills to shape the next web technologies. You will be a part of a dynamic and rewarding work environment which is well-known around the world. You will discover the excellent benefit plans and challenging programs at Adobe.

Adobe is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. We welcome and encourage diversity in the workplace.

Adobe just released the version 1.6 of both OSMF and Strobe Media Playback. The main things added to them are:

• Stage Video support for hardware-accelerated video presentation (OSMF)
• Smartphone and tablet optimized chrome for Flash-enabled devices (Strobe Media Playback)
• HTML5 video player for non-Flash devices (Strobe Media Playback)
• JavaScript device detection library for selecting the appropriate player and chrome (Strobe Media Playback)
• DVR rolling window support, which allows you specify how far back from the live point viewers can rewind (OSMF)
• Late-binding audio for providing viewers with multiple audio track options, e.g. additional languages, director’s commentary, and “home” v. “away” coverage (OSMF)
• Improvements to HTTP Dynamic Streaming as well as the ability to better manage bitrate profiles with multi-level manifests (OSMF)

To read more follow these links…
http://blogs.adobe.com/osmf/2011/09/announcing-osmf-and-strobe-media-playback-1-6.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392604,00.asp
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Flash-Media-Server-4.5-Delivers-to-iPad-%26-iPhone-77490.aspx

Yesterday, 11th of April, Adobe announced Creative Suite 5.5.

Besides all new features and improvements introduced in the new CS5.5, part of them presented in the previous video and some listed bellow, another new thing introduced with Creative Suite 5.5 is the “Pay as you go” subscription. Besides buying the whole product now the products can be rented for shorter periods of times. This helps a lot development teams that work on short term projects. Read more about it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html?promoid=INPKB

Now lets get back to what is new in the products…

Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK

• Multiscreen development with Flex 4.5 SDK
• New Spark components in Flex 4.5 SDK
  • Spark DataGrid
  • Spark Form
  • Spark Image and BitmapImage enhancements
• Spark Formatters
• Video and text enhancements in Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK
• Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK compiler improvements

There are too many new features and improvements to list them here. If you need to know more please read: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Builder 4.5

• Developing mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Blackberry Tablet OS
• Accelerated coding for Flex and ActionScript projects
• Improved designer/developer workflow
• Updated platform support
• Improved Performance
• Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP

There are many great changes but the most important I think is the workflow for developing mobile applications. See a video about it bellow:

Please read more about Flash Builder 4.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.5

• Resizable applications and components
• Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflow (see Understanding new Flash Catalyst CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 workflows)
• Prototyping and wireframing enhancements

I just mentioned a few of them and didn’t go deep into each feature or improvement, but you can read more here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashcatalyst/articles/introducing-flashcatalyst-cs55.html

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5

• CSS3 and HTML5 authoring
• jQuery Mobile integration
• Native mobile apps (for iOS and Android) with PhoneGap

Read more about new features and improvements in Dreamweaver CS5.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/whats-new-dwcs55.html

Other products that are included in Creative Suite got lots of new features and improvements and to see more keep an eye on adobe.com.

A while ago Adobe has release AIR 2.6 for Android, iOS and desktop. These are the new things in AIR 2.6:

• Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding. This features allows bitmaps to optionally be decoded in another thread as opposed to on-demand in the main thread.
• Owned Windows. The use case for owned windows is primarily things like tool palettes.
• Bitmap Capture in StageWebView. The new drawViewPortToBitmapData function on StageWebView lets you draw the view port of a StageWebView to a bitmap.
• Microphone support on iOS. The Microphone APIs now work on iOS.
• StageWebView on iOS. Just like on Android, the StageWebView now works on iOS.
• Multitasking on iOS. With 2.6, AIR applications will get activate and deactivate events on iOS as users switch to and from the app. AIR applications will also be properly resumed rather than restarted (unless the OS has decided to kill it for some reason which both iOS and Android reserve the right to do for any application).
• Retina Support on iOS. Pretty self-explanatory. 2.6 has support for the very high-resolution iPhone 4 and iPod touch screens (326 PPI), and the higher resolution application icons.
• iOS Camera, CameraUI, and CameraRoll Support. The Camera and CameraUI APIs are now supported on iOS, just like on Android.
• Improved hardware acceleration on iOS. Hardware acceleration on iOS now works like it does on Android, and generally provides much better performance than with PFI. And speaking of PFI…
• PFI is now ADT. The PFI (Packager for iPhone) utility is gone, and its functionality has been integrated into ADT. ADT can now be used to package AIR files, native desktop installers, Android applications, and iOS apps. I should also mention that iOS applications (IPA files) can be built and copied to iOS devices on Windows using ADT and iTunes. Very slick.
• Configurable panning with soft keyboard activation. When a text field receives focus in an AIR application on a mobile device, the soft keyboard is generally shown, and if the keyboard covers the text field, the UI is automatically panned so that the text field isn’t obscured.
• Programmatic control of the display of the on-screen keyboard.
• Support for the Amazon Android Market. AIR applications built with the AIR 2.6 SDK can be distributed on the new Amazon Appstore for Android.
• Vector printing on Linux. If you can get your printer to work on Linux, you can now get vector printing in AIR.
• Native cursor support. This is a big one. With AIR 2.6, developers have access to real native cursors. The new MouseCursorData class takes one or more bitmaps and a hotSpot Point, and creates an actual native cursor.
• On-device debugging over USB (Android only). No more wrestling with WiFi debugging. Mobile Android apps can now be debugged over USB.
• Native Menu event refinement.
• Enhanced text support on Android. Another big one. AIR 2.6 has support for scrolling, text selection, and text context menus (for cut/copy/paste) on Android.
• NetConnection.httpIdleTimeout. In AIR 2, we added the URLRequest.idleTimeout and URLRequestDefaults.idleTimeout properties. In AIR 2.6, we’re adding similar support to NetConnection with the new httpIdleTimeout property.
• Bundled Android USB drivers on Windows.
• Support for the vipaccess:// URI. The vipaccess:// URI for invoking VeriSign’s VIP Access application is now white-listed in AIR.
• -version flag for ADT. Running ADT with the -version flag will now return the version of ADT.

Read more:
http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2011/02/adobe-air-2-6-for-android-is-now-available.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2011/03/adobe-air-2-6-sdk-now-available-with-updated-ios-support.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/ios_features_in_air26.html

Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Beta is launched and can be downloaded from Adobe Labs: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10-3.html. Flash Player 10.3 is available for all major operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux) and debug version is also available.

New features 10 Flash Player 10.3:

• Media Measurement – Measuring video just got easier. With Flash Player 10.3 and Adobe SiteCatalyst®, developers can implement video analytics with as little as two lines of code. Analytics solutions can use a new set of open APIs to easily implement consistent video analytics irrespective of implementation or delivery protocol. Media Measurement for Flash allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what the audience reach is, and how much video is played.
• Acoustic Echo Cancellation – Flash Player 10.3 enables developers to create real-time online collaboration experiences with high-quality audio, such as telephony, in-game voice chat, and group conferencing applications. Developers can take advantage of acoustic echo cancellation, noise suppression, voice activity detection, and automatic compensation for various microphone input levels. End users will be able to experience higher quality audio facilitating smoother conversation flow, without using a headset.
• Integration with browser privacy controls for managing local storage

– Users now have a simpler way to clear local storage from the browser settings interface – similar to how users clear their browser cookies today. Flash Player 10.3 integrates control of local storage with the browser’s privacy settings in Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, and future releases of Apple Safari and Google Chrome.

• Native Control Panel – Flash Player 10.3 provides users with streamlined controls for managing their Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can access the Flash Player Settings Manager directly from the Control Panels or System Preferences on their computers.
• Auto-Update Notification for Mac OS – Flash Player 10.3 supports automatic notification of software updates on Mac OS, making it easier for Mac users to stay current with new capabilities in the latest version of Flash Player.

Read more:
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/03/introducing-flash-player-10-3-beta.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashruntimereleases/2011/03/07/flash-player-10-3-beta-available/

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