Flash Player 8

[ivanthem]

I made an effort to check if noone had posted this and I couldn't find anything so if someone has posted this just ignore me and I'll be eternally embarassed

From: http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000146.html

Yesterday Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect, demonstrated the next generation version of the Flash player at the macromedia flash conference in Tokyo, Japan. the packed crowd was the lucky first public audience in the world to witness what's coming next for Flash.

Only a few features were shown, but already you can see the monumental improvements being made. Man, does the next player ever scream.

The video shows:
-saffron, a new type-rendering engine
-dramatic performance improvements (a sluggish calendar app jumps from 14fps to 125fps)
-realtime bitmap effects (blur, dropshadow, colour matrix etc)
-realtime video alpha channel

The site has a huge number of mirrors for the video with different file sizes to suit different bandwith needs

[volcomp]

It's all true... just got back from "Flash in the can " convention in Vancouver BC... Mike Downey from Macromedia showed the group the new "Flash 8 Ball" features you listed... It is to be released late next year.

-B

[meglomor]

can't wait!

crossing fingers that they don't completely re-invent actionscript

[oldnewbie]

End of 2005? Don't think you have to worry too much about that!
By then maybe the Flash player 7 will have reached a 50% penetration, so...

[ivanthem]

Well, if that's just the Flash player, imgeine what Flash itself will be able to do...

The text rendering doesn't really get me fired up, but the dropshadows and inner glows, etc are very cool. Does that mean that you can apply drop shadows on any objects in Flash and have the file size be that of a simple vector shape? And if you zoom in on an object with a drop-shadow, will it re-render it and still stay smooth or will it go pixelated? Ofcourse that's the player; what about the browser plugin?
It looks like it's gonna be a major update- well bigger than MX2004 anyway so people who do visit Flash sites regularly will have an incentive to update... how many PCs have Flash and all they visit is sites with simple Flash banner ads or effects and people worry if they have the latest version- heaps of new sites are still made with Flash MX, and dare I say Flash 5? So really what's the fuss and worry about people updating? 500KB ain't much, especially when you consider how many people download bulky updates from Winupdate, and what do they ever do??

It's exciting to say the least, guess we'll have to wait and see!

[wrench]

The current flash player is about 900Kb (for the .ocx version)

And according to my stats, Flash player 7 is installed on ~ 70% of user computers. More if you look at the Macromedia stats.

I'm personally pretty pumped about the rendering of text in a legible fashion at all sizes and for all fonts (something I've had many comments from clients on in the past). Also the ability to run complex vector layouts and animations without putting as much strain on the CPU will be a great step forward.

[oldnewbie]

Well only another 14 months' wait! And then for the player to penetrate... Matter of days after that I guess!

[wrench]

Did you mean to say "By then maybe the Flash player *8* will have reached a 50% penetration, so..." in your post above?

I'm a bit confused, what are we waiting 14 months for?

[oldnewbie]

Originally posted by volcomp
It's all true... just got back from "Flash in the can " convention in Vancouver BC... Mike Downey from Macromedia showed the group the new "Flash 8 Ball" features you listed... It is to be released late next year.

-B

Late next year, in my mind, isn't February.