14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe is making a big push today with new versions of its popular media platforms Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR. With Flash Player 10.1 prerelease (a cross between a beta and a release candidate), Adobe actually brings a lot more features than the small .1 update in the version number would have you believe, including support for multi-touch and other media capabilities. More exciting though is the new AIR 2.0 beta, a hefty release with a bunch of new features and updates.
The biggest new feature in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 pre-release is multi-touch and gesture support. Obviously, you need a device with a touch screen, but the technology is becoming increasingly popular, especially in mobile devices and also in desktops and laptops, now that Windows 7 has shipped with full multi-touch support. Moreover, the runtime can take advantage of the hardware decoding capabilities, available in most of today's devices, to render H.264 encoded videos. Adobe says this saves energy, improving battery life, and also uses up less resources.
The latest Flash Player is the first step towards realizing the goals of the Open Screen Project, with which Adobe aims to enable developers create a single app that would work on any device, mobile or desktop, without the need to be specially designed for smaller screens and the likes. At this point, the 10.1 release isn't available for smartphones, but it should come for Palm's WebOS by the end of the year and for Android devices in early 2010.
Adobe has big plans for AIR, its multi-platform runtime, which allows developers to build just one app for all of the major desktop platforms Windows, Mac, and Linux. With AIR 2.0 the company has introduced some handy features, both on the system level but also with the platform itself. The latest update comes with significantly improved memory management, AIR being known to be a resource hog, something that should make AIR apps a lot more appealing. The platform also includes all of the features and updates of the Flash Player 10.1, which is build-in. More details on the upcoming AIR 2.0 can be found here.
Adobe Flash Player 10.1.51.45 prerelease for Windows is available for download here. Adobe AIR 2.0.0.10760 Beta for Windows is available for download here.