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Release notes from Adobe

Gain unprecedented creative control with expressive new features and visual performance improvements in Adobe Flash Player 11.

Adobe Flash Player software is a cross-platform browser plug-in that delivers breakthrough web experiences and is installed on more than 98% of Internet-connected desktops.

We're excited to announce that Flash Player 11 is now available for Android, Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Flash Player 11 improves stability, enhances security and user privacy protection, and provides new desktop video and audio capabilities for enterprises and developers. Intrepid developers can also check out a set of new bleeding-edge technologies in the Flash Player Incubator program on Adobe Labs. On the device side, with the rollout of Android 3.1 users of Honeycomb tablets like the Motorola XOOM will experience performance improvements introduced in Flash Player 10.3. For more information on how Google’s update to Honeycomb improves the experience of content designed for Flash Player, visit the Flash Platform blog.

What's New:
Media measurement (desktop only)
Measuring video usage just got easier. Using Adobe SiteCatalyst with Flash Player, developers can implement video analytics for websites with as little as two lines of code for the first time.
Media Measurement for Flash Player allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what their audience reach is, and how much video is played. Mobile support will be available in an upcoming release.

Acoustic echo cancellation (desktop only)
With Flash Player 11, developers can create real-time online collaboration experiences with high-quality audio for 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.

Enhanced privacy protection
Flash Player 11 enables local storage clearing within browsers' privacy settings and streamlines the controls of the Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings within the local control panel of desktop OSes.

Security enhancements
Including the support of auto-update notification for MacOS - See the Security Bulletin APSB11-12 for more details.

The Flash Player Incubator is also being updated today, highlighting new technologies and APIs that will provide further enhancements for performance, security, as well as support video and Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions. See detailed feature descriptions on Adobe Labs, let us know what you think on the Incubator forum or report bugs.

Finally, we now have an official name for one of our first Incubator technologies - the project formerly known by the code name "Molehill" will be called Stage 3D. Stage 3D is a new method/model of 2D and 3D rendering developed by Adobe and is supported with a new Stage3D API. The Stage3D API is a set of low-level GPU-accelerated APIs enabling advanced 2D and 3D capabilities across multiple screens and devices (desktop, mobile and TV). These new low-level APIs will provide 2D and 3D engine developers the flexibility to leverage GPU hardware acceleration for significant performance gains.

The excitement and community response has been amazing. Stage 3D (code name "Molehill") was also recently honored by Computer Graphics World following the Game Developers Conference as a recipient of its Silver Edge Awards, a designation presented to companies whose product represents the best of show at the industry's leading conferences and exhibitions. From Computer Graphics World's April 2011 print edition, its editors noted, "Using the new 3D APIs in Adobe Flash Player and AIR will make it possible to deliver sophisticated 3D experiences across almost every computer and device connected to the Internet."

We hope you enjoy the improved performance and new features in Flash Player 11 on desktop and Android devices, and please continue to provide us feedback on the capabilities we’re demonstrating in the Incubator.