Adobe Flash Player "Astro"

Adobe® Flash® Player is an advanced client runtime for delivering powerful and consistent user experiences across browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. The next major release of Flash Player, codename "Astro," was first previewed at Adobe MAX 2007. The preview highlighted a few of the new capabilities the Flash Player team is working on for Astro: advanced text layout, simple 3D effects, and custom filters, blend modes and effects.

Advanced Text Layout

Astro will support advanced text layout capabilities, including support for bidirectional languages and complex scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai, through a new layout engine and APIs. Adobe is also developing a library of ActionScript-based text layout components based on these new APIs to provide easy-to-integrate features, such as multi-column layout of editable text that automatically reflows, wrapping around inline images, and handling tables. With this new architecture, text becomes an extensible part of the platform -- new text layout features can be delivered without requiring a new player release.

3D Effects

Add a new dimension to your content and interfaces with APIs that extend familiar Flash metaphors to position display objects in 3D space. These new APIs provide an integrated, straightforward way to achieve simple 3D effects while delivering full interactivity and great performance for ever more immersive user experiences.

Custom Filters, Blend Modes and Effects

Going beyond the built-in filters and effects of Flash Player 8, Astro will leverage a new high-performance image processing language, codenamed “Hydra,” to allow you to create your own filters and effects. Custom effects can be combined with existing native filters for unprecedented creative control and added to your applications without any Flash Player update. Check out the Adobe Image Foundation Toolkit Technology Preview on Adobe Labs and start learning how to develop and share your own custom filters, effects and blend modes in the Hydra language.

FAQ

If you have questions, please post them to the Discussion tab and we'll pull from there to update this FAQ. This is early preview information of a few Astro features, so we may not be able to answer everything at this time.

Q: When will Astro be available in beta or final release?
A: It's still too early to say, but we wanted to take the opportunity at Adobe MAX to give a preview of some of the cool new features we're working on to the community. Stay tuned!