Adobe to refocus on HTML5

Official declarations released by Adobe in a blog post:

• HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
  
• We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.  

Flash Player 11

The new release of the popular Adobe Flash Player added quite some interesting features.

Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering (Player & AIR desktop + AIR for TV) — Stage 3D is a new architecture for hardware accelerated graphics rendering developed that provides a set of low-level APIs that enable advanced 2D and 3D rendering capabilities across screens and devices (desktop, mobile, and TV). Using Stage 3D, app and framework developers can now access high performance GPU hardware acceleration, enabling the creation of new classes of rich, interactive experiences. Note: Stage 3D for mobile versions of Flash Player & AIR will be enabled in a future release.

Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) — Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) provides protection for streaming video across screens while eliminating the deployment complexity of a license server.

H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop) — Stream high-quality video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry stanard support, enabling both immersive real-time communications such as video chat/conferencing and live video broadcasts.

JPEG-XR support — Flash Player and AIR now include support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard (International 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.

Flash thoughts

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Read Steve Jobs' thoughts on Flash on the Apple website.

HTTP video streaming

With the next version of its Flash Player client, Adobe Systems Inc. says it will finally allow media companies and service providers to stream Flash video without using its proprietary streaming protocol.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will support all the same live, on-demand, adaptive bit-rate, and DVR-like capabilities through HTTP that Adobe has built out to work with RTMP, its proprietary streaming protocol.

Microsoft cited scalability as one reason it chose to use HTTP video delivery for its Silverlight Smooth Streaming capabilities. And Akamai recently announced its HTTP-based HD Network, developing its own workaround to enable Flash streaming via HTTP, without Adobe's help.

Source: Contentinople.

GPU acceleration for Flash

NVIDIA and Adobe Systems recently announced that they are collaborating as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, to leverage GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices, including netbooks, tablets, mobile phones and other on-the-go media devices.

NVIDIA is also participating in the Open Screen Project, a broad initiative of 25 industry leaders to deliver a consistent runtime environment across devices. Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project is dedicated to enable Web content and standalone applications across desktops, netbooks, mobile devices, televisions, and other consumer electronics that take advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities.

For more information, visit www.openscreenproject.org.

Flash goes mobile

Adobe and ARM yesterday announced a technology collaboration to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR for ARM Powered devices, ranging from mobile phones to set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, televisions, automotive platforms, personal media players and other mobile computing devices. The collaboration is expected to accelerate mobile graphics and video capabilities on ARM platforms to bring rich Internet applications and Web services to mobile devices and consumer electronics worldwide.

The joint technology optimization is targeted for the ARMv6 and ARMv7 architectures used in the ARM11 family and the Cortex-A series of processors and is expected to be available in the second half of 2009.

Go to the press releases here and here.