Release Notes | Flash Player® 11.6 AIR® 3.6

March 12th, 2013. Welcome to Flash Player 11.6 and AIR 3.6. This is a monthly scheduled update to the original February 12th, 2013 release. The release contains security and bug fixes.

• Loading of telemetry.cfg causes performance problems on page refresh(3506936)
• Opera browser crash(3488141)
• Flash Player crash due to integer overflow(3475889)

• Memory intrinsics: AVM2 fast memory op codes
  • Fast memory is now exposed through the avm2.intrinsics.memory package

The following features were made available with the Flash Player release on February 12th, 2013. 

• Graphics Data Query
• Improved permissions UI for full screen keyboard access
• Multiple SWF support(iOS)
• Setting device specific Retina Display resolution(iOS)
• Updated File API following App store guidelines(iOS)
• HiDpi support for FlashPro
  

• In some circumstances, audio only files fail to play back when streamed through pRTMP (3330232)
• On iOS, CameraRoll.addBitmapData in AIR does not support transparent bitmap data(3295239)
• Switching the camera input on netstream causes videostream to stop(3311600)
• When playing a video stream, changing the rotation from portrait to landscape results in the video becoming sized improperly on certain mobile devices (3344041)
• When programmatically sending AIR to fullscreen on MAC OSX 10.7.3 and later,  the app window is being shown in front of the stage (3310530)
• On iOS, when the microphone rate is set to 5 or 8 KHz, audio latency occurs (3357306)
• StageVideo fails to maintain hardware render state when attaching camera (3359992)
• In certain circumstances on the Mac, when viewing video in fullscreen, and then exiting fullscreen, video will fail to render (3362055)
• On Android, system fonts cannot be loaded in AIR(3474762)

Mac Retina (hiDPI) display support for Adobe AIR applications

This feature provides support for packaging AIR applications to Retina (hiDPI) display on supported Macs. To enable Retina display,add the following element in the application descriptor.
Please note that this tag currently applies to Mac OS only.  There is an equally named tag <requestedDisplayResolution> in the <iPhone> section for iOS AIR applications.

Update the application descriptor namespace to 3.6, and repackage the application. (Setting the <requestedDisplayResolution> element to 'standard', or not including it at all disables Retina display support.)

 This feature has a few limitations:.

1. Content displayed via HTMLLoader is not supported. (Please use StageWebView instead to display your HTML content in retina display.)
2. Existing applications authored with 3.5 or earlier will not display at retina resolution. 

Multiple SWF Support

This feature provides support for packaging and loading multiple SWFs on iOS in AOT mode. With this feature, user can use multiple SWFs in an AIR iOS application using the Loader class. There are a few limitations on iOS for using this feature:

1) The secondary SWF which is to be loaded by the root SWF should have the same application domain as that of the root SWF, otherwise, loading the secondary SWF would result in the following error:
Error 3747: Multiple application domains are not supported on the operating system. The following is the correct way to load a secondary SWF:

2) Methods unload() and loadBytes()of the loader class will not work on iOS.
3) Number of SWFs that can be packaged in an application will depend on the capability of the machine, because while packaging the IPA, machine can go out of memory and therefore, packaging will fail with out of memory error.

Graphics Data Query

This feature allows you to query any DisplayObject and get a representation of it through GraphicsData objects. This is very useful to serialize/deserialize a DisplayObject, create custom exporters (spritesheets, SVG, etc.).

For more details about this feature: http://www.bytearray.org/?p=4893

Exclude devices from requestedDisplayResolution tag

A new attribute ‘excludeDevices’ has been added to the <requestedDisplayResolution> tag in the application descriptor. This attribute will allow developers to explicitly disable the specified display resolution on one or more iOS devices. To use this feature, application descriptor namespace 3.6 or greater would be required. This feature will not be supported on AIR simulator. A developer could exclude:

A particular device by mentioning its exact model name. Following example disables retina display only on iPad with device model as iPad3,1.

Multiple devices by providing a space separated list of exact model names. Following example disables retina display only on iPads with device model name as iPad3,1 or iPad4,1.

All Variations of a particular model. Following example disables retina display on all variations of 'iPad3' like iPad3,1 iPad3,2

A family of devices. Following example disables retina display on all iPhones (irrespective of the model)

Similarly, retina mode can be enabled for particular devices by excluding from this list when requestedDisplayResolution is specified as standard in the application descriptor. The following example enables retina display only on iPhone (all models) while apps continue to run using the standard display resolution on other devices.

Note. Device model name can be fetched using the flash.system.Capabilities.os property. The following table lists the device model names for commonly used iOS devices:

File API change for App store support

The File API now has 2 new properties:
1) File.cacheDirectory
It is a static property which points to the <APPLICATION_HOME>/Library/Caches directory on Mac OSX and iOS devices. File.cacheDirectory will point to the parent directory being used by File.createTempDirectory on Windows and Android. As per Apple recommendations, this directory should be used for storing data that can be downloaded again or regenerated. Files stored in this directory are not backed up on the iCloud. Examples of files you should put in the Caches directory include database cache files and downloadable content, such as that used by magazine, newspaper, and map applications.

2) File.preventBackup
This property can be set to exclude files from getting backed up on iCloud. The default value of this property is false on all platforms and can be set to true only on iOS. When the property is set to true for a directory on iOS, all files in that directory are not backed up. This property works on iOS 5.1 devices and later and does not work on the iOS Simulator. Files stored in APP_HOME/tmp/ or APP_HOME/Library/Caches directory are not backed up, irrespective of the value set for this property. On querying the value of preventBackup for a particular File object, the last set value of preventBackup or false (the default value) will be returned on iOS and all other platforms will continue to return false, even if explicitly set to true.

To use this feature, application descriptor namespace 3.6 and SWF version 19 or greater would be required.

Authoring for Flash Player 11.6

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 19 by passing in an extra compiler argument to the Flex compiler: -swf-version=19. Directions are below. If you are using the Adobe Flex SDK:

• Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 11.6
• Download Flex 4.5.1 SDK (4.5.1.21328) from the Flex 4.5 SDK table.
• Install the build in your development environment
• In Flash Builder, create a new ActionScript project: File -> New -> ActionScript project.
• Open the project Properties panel (right-click and chose 'Properties'). Select ActionScript Compiler from the list on the left.
• Use the 'Configure Flex SDK's' option in the upper right hand corner to point the project to Flex build 21328. Click ok.
• Configure your project to target SWF version 19
• Open the project Properties panel (right-click and chose 'Properties'). Select ActionScript Compiler from the list on the left.
• Add to the 'Additional compiler arguments' input: -swf-version=19. This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 18. If you compile on the command-line and not in Flash Builder, you need to add the same compiler argument.
• Ensure you have installed the new Flash Player 11.6 build in your browser.

Authoring for AIR 3.6 Update to the AIR 3.6 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 3.6 namespace in order to access the new AIR 3.6 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 3.6 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users start using the AIR 3.6 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new 3.6 capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/3.6">

Found a bug? Please submit a bug to the Flash Player and Adobe AIR bug database.

Flash Player and AIR may leverage your graphics hardware to decode and play H.264 video. There may be video issues that can only be reproduced with your particular graphics hardware and driver. When reporting an issue involving video, it is essential to note your graphics hardware and driver, along with your operating system and browser (when using Flash Player), so that we can reproduce and investigate issues. Please be sure to include this information as described in Instructions for Reporting Video Playback Issues. Note: Due to the high volume of email we receive, we are unable to respond to every request.

Thank you for using Adobe® Flash Player® and AIR® and for taking the time to send us your feedback!

For the latest Flash Player system requirements please review the document here

For the latest AIR system requirements please review the document here