Adobe powers up Flash Player 11 and AIR 3

Adobe has announced updated versions of its Flash Player and AIR platforms for internet applications, and insisted that its technology still has a future despite the growing importance of HTML5 and Microsoft's plans for Metro-style apps in Windows 8.

Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, both set to ship in early October, come with a number of enhancements such as support for hardware acceleration of graphics, the ability to include native platform code for some functions, and greater 64-bit support.

Adobe also clarified how it sees Flash competing against application platforms like HTML5, which threaten to remove the need for plug-in runtime executables such as Flash Player.

Danny Winokur, Adobe vice president and general manager of platform, pinpointed three specific areas where Flash is still the best technology for the job: games, media apps, and data-driven apps such as those delivering news content.

"There has been a lot of controversy and debate over the relative roles of HTML5 and Flash and when is the appropriate time to use which technology for which kind of project. We've grounded our decisions in feedback from our customers: the content publishers and content creators," he said.

Flash enables developers to deliver the best performance for games, according to Adobe, and provides a single tool chain and programming language that works across multiple platforms.

For all other general purpose applications and web content "it is very clear that HTML5 is a mature enough technology and a really good solution for delivering those other experiences", he added.

Adobe has tools and solutions for both platforms, its upcoming Adobe Edge tool focusing on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

Winokur also reiterated Adobe's position on Windows 8, following reports last week that Flash will not be available on the next version of Microsoft's platform.

"We do expect that we will support Flash Player on IE 10 for Windows 8 on the desktop, as well as AIR applications in the Metro environment, which we expect will be popular on touch devices," he stated.

In fact, Adobe aid it expects that more than 200 million smartphones and tablets will support Flash based applications by the end of 2011, and predicts this figure will rise to over 1 billion by 2015.

With its three key application segments in mind, Adobe said that hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics will enable rendering speeds 1,000 times faster than current versions of Flash and Air, offering immersive games comparable to those on dedicated consoles.

Native extensions support allows developers to take advantage of open source libraries and access platform-specific hardware APIs, such as those driving near-field communication readers.

Adobe has also extended its captive runtime support to all supported platforms. This lets developers package the AIR runtime along with the application into a single executable file, and was previously supported only on iOS devices to get around Apple's objections to Flash applications on the iPad and iPhone.

For media-centric applications, Adobe is delivering content protection across mobile platforms, plus support for subscription and rental business models.

Other improvements include HD video quality across all platforms, and broader support for 64-bit operating systems and browsers.