Townsend Beta Release Notes

 

Flash Player 22 and AIR 22 Release Notes  

Welcome to Adobe® Flash® Player 22 and Adobe AIR 22!

Last Updated: June 29, 2016

Welcome to the latest Flash Runtime version 22 beta!  We've been hard at work adding new features to Flash Player and AIR and we're lookingforward to receiving feedback from our development and Flash Player community.

This beta release includes new features as well as enhancements and bug fixes related to security, stability, performance, and devicecompatibility for Flash Player 22 and AIR 22. This document may be updated periodically as more information becomes available.

As always, we appreciate all feedback.  We encourage you to post in our beta forums or create bug reports or feature requests on our public bugdatabase.

Flash Player Beta ForumAIR Beta ForumBug Database

NOTE:

The ActiveX Flash Player in this release is not compatible with Windows® 8.x or 10 Flash Player for Windows® 8.x/10 is available as part of the generally available Windows® 8.x/10 update 

New and Updated Features

Video and Camera support for Stage3D by VideoTexture for Flash Player (Beta Only)

Before Flash Player 21, the use of video in Stage3D required the use of the Video object (which is not hardware accelerated), copying of videoframe to a BitmapData object, and loading of the data onto the GPU which is CPU intensive .

So, Video texture object was introduced, which allows hardware decoded video to be used in Stage 3D content. For Flash Player 22, videotexture objects were added to support NetStream and Cameras in a manner consistent/similar to StageVideo. Such textures can be used assource textures in stage3D rendering pipeline. The textures can be used as rectangular, RGB, no mipmap textures in the rendering of a scene.They are treated as ARGB texture by the shaders (that is, the AGAL shaders do not have to bother about YUV->RGB conversion) so standardshaders used with static images can be used without change. The image that is used by the rendering pipeline is the most up-to-date frame at thetime the rendering using this texture occurs. There is no tearing in a video frame, but if the same texture is used several times, some of theinstances may be from different timestamps.

 Using a VideoTexture object, all this work is optimized internally and  YUV to RGB conversion and texture loading can be completely moved tothe GPU. Please see the VideoTexture devnet article for implementation details.

 Video Texture Feature exists for AIR and was enabled in AIR 17.0

Android - Video Pipeline Changes

To address the recommendations from Google and to keep pace with the future developments, We've made some significant changes in the waywe use for codec decoding for AIR Android, there is no impact on functionality or performance for an AS developer. However, AS developers areencouraged to test their Video based applications and report if they see any injections with AIR 22.

Mac: Prevent Cross-Channel Installation

Beginning with Flash Player version 22, installing a beta version over a release version - and vice versa - will require first uninstalling the installedversion before installing the cross channel version.  For example, if you have a current release version installed, you’ll first need to uninstall itusing the beta uninstaller before installing the beta version. The beta version must also be uninstalled, using the beta uninstaller, prior to installingthe current release version. 

Note that this brings feature parity with Flash Player on Windows, which has had this feature since version 14.

EnableLocalAppData

Flash applications use Appdata/Roaming directory (C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player) to store information like LSO(Local Shared Object)s or logs etc. Many times it happens that users, especially Enterprise admins, have placed AppDaata\Roaming directory ona network drive. With this feature, we are providing a flag for mms.cfg, “EnableLocalAppData” which if set, will place the Macromedia Folder(where flash app data is stored) in AppData/Local directory (C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Macromedia\Flash Player). WithEnableLocalAppData, the user will be able to place their system’s AppData folder on a network location without worrying about flash applications’data or logs. Users can set EnableLocalAppData by providing EnableLocalAppData=1, EnableLocalAppData=yes, or EnableLocalAppData=truevalue in mms.cfg. 

Win: Add HiDPI support for AIR desktop

From AIR 22 onwards, we have introduced HiDPI support for AIR Desktop on Windows, where we will be providing higher quality rendering forAIR contents on HiDPI displays. The feature will work on the concept of higher pixel density scaling instead of pixel-doubling scaling. The featureis already provided for AIR on Mac Retina displays.

Below is requirement to implement the above feature in an AIR app

requestedDisplayResolution set “high”

The developer will have to set the requestedDisplayResolution as “high” in their manifest file.

<requestedDisplayResolution>high</requestedDisplayResolution>

stage.contentsScaleFactor

The AIR content would scale according to the value of stage.contentsScaleFactor. Where, the value of stage.contentsScaleFactor would becalculated as

stage.contentsScaleFactor = Current DPI / DPI at 100% (The DPI at 100% for Windows is 96 by default)

However, some of the content on Windows would scale only after user sign-off and then sign-in again, as prompted by the OS.

In case of extended screen connected, the AIR app would adjust according to the DPI level of the particular screen, where each screen can haveits independent DPI level. The high quality rendering will cover the Stage3D contents, vector assets and text, whereas high resolution bitmapassets will have to be provided by the developer. The Stage3D back buffer needs to be configured to high resolution back buffer which can bedone by calling Context3D.configureBackBuffer with the wantsBestResolution parameter set to 'true'

The number of Screen pixels for the content will be

ActionScript side Flash Pixels * Contents Scale Factor * Contents Scale Factor

Anti-Aliasing(Render to texture) for AIR Mobile

Anti-Aliasing is useful in improving perceived image quality in applications. Hardware base Multisampling Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) is now availablefor both Mobile Platforms i.e.  iOS and Android using Contex3D.setRenderToTexture API. This feature was previously available for Desktop andFlash. To enable MSAA set the level from 0 to 2 using the Context3D.setRenderToTexture http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference

./actionscript/3/flash/display3D/Context3D.html#setRenderToTexture%28%29

Following are the effect of levels of antialiasing values:

0=1 subsample, No antialiasing

1=2 subsamples, medium antialiasing

2=4 subsamples, high antialiasing.

If we provide higher level of antialiasing (more than 2) the level will be clipped to either the maximum level of antialiasing supported by GPU or 2.

Note: This feature is currently not available in configureBackbuffer (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/dis APIplay3D/Context3D.html#configureBackBuffer())

Assumptions and Dependencies

1)      Anti-Aliasing is not available in software mode rendering.

2)      Extra GPU memory will be used by the App using Anti-aliasing and hence can cause slight performance degradation. 

Echo Cancellation on AIR iOS

Starting AIR 22, we have introduced Echo Cancellation for AIR iOS applications. Acoustic echo occurs when speaker output feeds back to built-inmicrophone input producing disturbing echoing artifacts and significantly reducing quality of captured data.  Acoustic echo arises in collaborationapplications, where two or more parties carry out interactive conversation. So from now onwards, the developers will be able to develop suchVOIP applications without any echo using AIR on iOS.

This feature is already present on AIR for desktop. Refer here. To get access to device Microphone, we use Microphone.getMicrophone(), but thisAPI returns a simple microphone, which does not have the ability to eliminate acoustic echo. Now in order to remove acoustic echo, we need toget an instance of Microphone using the API: Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone(). The device microphone returned by this API will be havingthe acoustic echo cancellation feature enabled. Please note that the application must be packaged with latest AIR SDK 22 or above andswf-version should be 33 or above. 

Find below the example code snippet for the Microphone loopback scenario.

public function Microphone(){mic = Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone();mic.setLoopBack(true);mic.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, mic_status);}

Limitations:      •  VOIP Applications will work only on RTMP.      •  Performance of feature will be varying depending upon the iOS version and and the device type.      •  The API will be a no-op on AIR for iOS.MicrophoneEnhancedOptions

Multitasking Enhancements Support in AIR iOS [ ]Beta

With iOS 9, Apple introduced Multiasking enhancements for some iPad devices, please see details on following pages. 

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Articles/iOS9.html

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/WindowsViews/Conceptual/AdoptingMultitaskingOniPad/

We're happy to share that AIR 22 lets developers utilize these iOS enhancements except Picure In Picture. Here are the technical guidelines tobring these functionalities to your iOS application on supported iPads.

Technical Guidelines

Application Descriptor Changes

Three new tags ( ,  ,  ) in application descriptor are introduced, please add them as following.multiasking launchScreen assetsCar

 <iPhone>        <multitasking>true</multitasking>        <launchScreen>LaunchScreen.storyboardc</launchScreen>        <assetsCar>Assets.car</assetsCar>        <InfoAdditions><![CDATA[             <key>UIDeviceFamily</key>                     <array>                         <string>1</string>                         <string>2</string>                     </array>]]></InfoAdditions></iPhone>

 

Default value of   tag is false. We need to keep the value true for supporting multitasking.multitasking

launchScreen and   represent the name of storyboardc and Asset.car file used respectively. launchScreen file is mandatoryassetsCarand assetCar is optional.

 

Note: these files are also used to show the   for your app, hence you do not need to provide the launch images separately whilelaunch imagespackaging the IPA for iOS 8+ devices. For iOS 7 and below, you still need to package the launch images separately. As per Apple guidelines, tobe able to support the multasking enhancements, your app needs to support all orientation states, that means following tags are mandatory. 

<aspectRatio>any</aspectRatio><autoOrients>true</autoOrients>

 

 

Creating Assets.car and storyboardc files

To create Assets.car File and storyboard.c files used in your multitasking application, AS developer needs to have a  orMac with Xcode 7.1above. On your Mac, open Xcode and open File -> New -> Project -> iOS Application -> single View Application. Give any name to the app andclick create. In the general tab of your project select Deployment Target as 8.0.

 

Click on Assets.xcassets on the left column and create a New Image Set, name it LaunchImageScreen and add images to the image placeholderas needed. For the various image dimensions, you might want to refer to .this

 

Click on LaunchScreen.storyboard in the left column. At the bottom right of the xcode window, enter the text “image” in the filter text box. Dragand drop the Image View to the LaunchScreen.storyboard. On top right, in the image view selector, select the Imageset LaunchImageScreen created above.

 

Now, drag the image view in the storyboard to cover the full screen of the storyboard. At the bottom left click on add missing constraints.

Run this native app on your iOS device (iOS 8+) and make sure the launchscreen covers your screen. Go to the .app file created in your filesystem where you created the project, right click on .app file and show package contents. Copy the file from the package, also Assets.car Launc

file from folder. You can package the app with the extracted and ashScreen.storyboardc Base.lproj Assets.car LaunchScreen.storyboardcassets as the following ADT command. Appropriate resize events are dispatched on runtime for various app states, AS Developers can handlethem on runtime.  

<path to adt> -package -target ipa-app-store -provisioning-profile<.mobileprovision> -keystore <.p12> -storetype pkcs12 -storepass <password> <.ipa> <.xml> <.swf> LaunchScreen.storyboardcAssets.car

 

Support for Android N Beta

AIR Applications built using AIR 21 or below might not run properly and can encounter following dialog on Android N Preview build. We've fixedthis issue with AIR 22, developers are encouraged to upgrade to AIR SDK 22.

 

Override default language via mms.cfg

 This feature allows users to change flash player’s default language by setting a property, named in mms.cfg. Flash player’sDefaultLanguagedefault language will be set to the language given in DefaultLanguage key in mms.cfg regardless of system’s language. 

DefaultLanguage can have any from table below: Value

Language Value Support

    Win Mac PPAPI

    FP AIR FP AIR FP

Arabic ar Y Y Y N N

Bulgarian bg Y Y Y N N

Czech cs Y Y Y Y Y

Danish da Y Y Y N N

German de Y Y Y Y Y

Greek el Y Y Y N N

English en Y Y Y Y Y

English - United Kingdom en_gb Y Y Y Y N

Spanish es Y Y Y Y Y

Estonian et Y Y Y N N

Finnish fi Y Y Y N N

French fr Y Y Y Y Y

Hebrew he Y Y Y N N

Croatian hr Y Y Y N N

Hungarian hu Y Y Y N N

Italian it Y Y Y Y Y

Japanese ja Y Y Y Y Y

Korean ko Y Y Y Y Y

Azeri lt Y Y Y N N

Latvian lv Y Y Y N N

Norwegian nb Y Y Y N N

Dutch nl Y Y Y Y Y

Polish pl Y Y Y Y Y

Portuguese pt Y Y Y Y Y

Portuguese - Portugal pt_pt Y Y Y Y N

Romanian ro Y Y Y N N

Russian ru Y Y Y Y Y

Slovak sk Y Y Y N N

Slovenian sl Y Y Y N N

Serbian sr Y Y Y N N

Swedish sv Y Y Y Y Y

Thai th Y Y Y N N

Turkish tr Y Y Y Y Y

Ukrainian uk Y Y Y N N

Chinese - China zh-CN Y Y Y Y Y

Chinese - Taiwan zh-TW Y Y Y Y Y

 

 Note: “Y” indicates flash player’s language will be overridden with language given in DefaultLanguage property while for "N", "en" will be assignedfor configured language. 

This feature is applicable to both Flash Player (all plugin-types) and AIR. 

Runtime Versions

Flash Player: 22.0.0.207

AIR Runtime: n/a

AIR SDK & Compiler: n/a

Fixed Issues

 

June 29, 2016

AIR

n/a

Flash Player

Embedded Flash player in Adobe Reader fails to load in Firefox and Internet Explorer(4167793)Black screen is observed on an online examination software CANDG Secureclient using Activex(4167280)

June 24, 2016

AIR

n/a

Flash Player

[Windows]Blank screen is observed and content is not loading. (4165783) [Windows]Blank artifacts is observed while playing the flash 3D games. (4166319) 

June 22, 2016

AIR

n/a

Flash Player

None

June 16, 2016

AIR

n/a

Flash Player

None

May 25, 2016

AIR 

ATF containing RGB888 format are not getting rendered properly(4154433)[ iOS] App crashes when compiled with AIR 20 or higher (4151370)[Android]memory problem on airSDK20 (4101613)[iOS9] AIR crashed when use sounds in background mode (4083774)[iOS] [Win SDK] Compilation Failed While executing ld64 error on packaging ipa in Windows machine using  -hideAneLibSymbols yes(4118588)[Android] FLV videos don't work with StageVideo (3943664)

Flash Player

None

May 18, 2016

AIR (Mobile)

[iOS][Android] StageText: add FocusEvent.MOUSE_FOCUS_CHANGE event that allows preventDefault() to cancel focus loss (4057869)[iOS] UIBackgroundModes for "location" not working (4136086)[Android] Entering Unicode Emoticons crashes App (4118744)

 

May 16, 2016

Flash Player

None

May 11, 2016

 

AIR

ANE compiled with AIR 22 is not working anymore. (4146925)[iOS] Push notification Subscription crashes the app. (4137024)

[iOS] App crashes on iOS on calling CameraUI (4148590)[iOS] A particular application crash when brought to foreground from background.

May 4, 2016

Flash Player

none

AIR

[Win10]Blank screen is observed when useNative is set to true in StageWebView.(4057481)[Android] FocusEvent.MouseFocusChange event should be added in StageText in Android - 3797220[Win10]Unable to enter the Uppercase Letters using StageWebView.(4088290)

April 27, 2016

Flash Player

None

April 13, 2016

 AIR

None

April 6, 2016

AIR (Mobile)

[iOS][Win] IPA packaged on Windows machine cannot be submitted to the Apple App store. Error "This build is invalid" occursin iTunes connect.[iOS] [Win] Installation Error: ApplicationVerificationFailed message appears on installing IPA using adt command if there is any info plistinside the assets or ANE.[iOS]: The Bengali( or Hindi) characters displayed as blank box when click the outside of Textfield after typing the Bengali(or Hindi)characters into Textfield. (3975752)

AIR (Desktop)

None

Known Issues

 

June 29, 2016

Flash Player

None

AIR 

n/a

June 24, 2016

Flash Player

Flash Player quits unexpectedly in SMART Notebook when it attempts to load the  NPAPI plugin(4167469)Black screen is observed on an online examination software CANDG Secureclient using Activex(4167280)[Firefox]Audio continues to play while video stops while playing any video on cbc.ca(4167329)

AIR 

n/a

June 22, 2016

Flash Player

[Windows]Blank screen is observed and content is not loading. (4165783) [Windows]Blank artifacts is observed while playing the flash 3D games. (4166319) 

 

AIR 

n/a

June 16, 2016

Flash Player

None

AIR 

n/a

May 25, 2016

Flash Player

None

AIR Mobile

[iOS] Application is getting crashed when moving to and fro from screens using forward and backward button when RAM usage ondevice is more than 23 MB (4150489)[iOS] TextField with TextFieldType.INPUT  cuts off text on left side when focused (4009346)[Android] ArgumentError: Error #3500: The extension context does not have a method with the name allocateSpace. (4156619)

 

 

May 18, 2016

AIR Mobile

 [iOS] Event.SUSPEND is never called on iOS, does not work. (4149404)  

May 16, 2016

Flash Player

[Win 10][IE/Edge]Custom Right click handling of the flash player is broken(4149082)."Upload" window does not appear on clicking 'FileReference.Upload' button.(4151890)

May 11, 2016

 

AIR 

None

May 4, 2016

Flash Player

None

AIR

None

April 27, 2016

Flash Player

[Mac]Black Screen is observed when we try to render videotexture object using  camera(4141498).[Mac]Switching to or escaping from fullscreen restarts the video rendered by the videotexture object in baseline constrainedprofile(4142328).

April 13, 2016

 AIR (Mobile)

[iOS] UIBackgroundModes for "location" not working (4136086)

April 6, 2016

AIR (Mobile)

[iOS] IPA packaging fails intermittently with ld error (4117478)

[iOS9] App crashes when use sounds in background mode. Exception type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) (4083774)

[Android] Entering Unicode Emoticons on Android crashes App (4118744)

[iOS] App Crashes on AOT mode if assets contains swf with same class name (4125634)

[iOS] [Windows] Error, ld: in section __TEXT,__text reloc 153: R_ABS reloc but no absolute symbol at target address for architecturearm64 while packaging Application with Social.ane using flag -hideAneLibSymbols yes (4005515)

AIR (Desktop)

Publisher Unknown warning during installation on Mac OSX with Adobe AIR 21 [4131296][MAC] Substitute plugin version is detected as 20.0.0.0 instead of 254.0.0.0 [4134436]

Authoring for Flash Player 21

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 30 by passing in an extra compiler argument to the ASC 2.0 compiler:-swf-version=30.  Directions are below:

Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 21Download and install Flash Builder 4.7 from Creative Cloud: -https://www.adobe.com/products/gaming/tools.htmlBackup the existing AIR SDK if you need to restore it later then replace the bundled AIR SDK with the AIR 22 SDK. To do this, unzip theAIR 22 SDK to this location:\

MacOS: /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4.7/eclipse/plugins/com.adobe.flash.compiler_4.7.0.348297/AIRSDKWindows: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4.7 (64Bit)\eclipse\plugins\com.adobe.flash.compiler_4.7.0.349722\AIRSDK\

In Flash Builder, create a new project: File -> New -> project.\Open the project Properties panel (right-click and chose 'Properties'). Select\ ActionScriptCompiler from the list on the left.Add to the 'Additional compiler arguments' input: -swf-version=30.  This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 30. If youcompile on the command-line and not in Flash Builder, you need to add the same compiler argument.

Authoring for AIR 22 Update to the AIR 22 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 22 namespace in order to access the new AIR 22  API's and behavior. If your applicationdoes not require the new AIR 16 API's and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users startusing the AIR 22 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new   capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns16attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="   ">http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/ 22.0

System Requirements 

For current release of Flash Player in production, system requirements visit -   http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/For current release of AIR in production, system requirements, visit - http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/

Flash Player 21 has the following minimum system requirements:

 

Windows

2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel® Atom™ 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbooks32- and 64-bit (unless noted): Microsoft® Windows® XP SP3 (32-bit), Windows Vista® (32-bit), Windows 7, Windows 8.1 andWindows 10Latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera512MB of RAM (1GB of RAM recommended for netbooks); 128MB of graphics memory

 

Mac OS

Intel Core™ Duo 1.83GHz or faster processorMac OS X v10.6, or laterLatest versions of Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera512MB of RAM; 128MB of graphics memory

 

Linux

2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel Atom 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbooks32- and 64-bit: Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) 5.6 or later, openSUSE® 11.3 or later, or Ubuntu 10.04 or laterLatest versions of Firefox or Google Chrome512MB of RAM; 128MB of graphics memory

Note: Flash Player 11.2 is the last supported Flash Player version for Linux. Adobe will continue to provide security updates.

 

AIR 22 has the following minimum system requirements:

Windows

2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel Atom™ 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbook class devicesMicrosoft® Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 Classic or Windows 10512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)AIR SDK Development Supports Microsoft® Windows 7 and above, 64-bit only

Mac OS

Intel® Core™ Duo 1.83GHz or faster processorMac OS X v10.7, and above512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)AIR SDK Development supports Mac OS 10.9 and above, 64bit only

Android

ARMv7/x86 processor with vector FPU, minimum 550MHz, OpenGL ES 2.0, H.264 and AAC HW decodersAndroid™ 4.0 and above256MB of RAM

iOS

iOS 8 and above