Release Notes | Flash Player 18 and AIR 18

Welcome to the Flash Player and AIR 18 release notes!

August 11, 2015

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with critical security and functional bug fixes. We recommend all customers upgrade to this version.

For those organizations that use the Extended Support Release (ESR), please note that we have incremented the ESR from version 13 to version 18 with today's update.

Current Flash Player 18 users who have enrolled in the "Allow Adobe to install updates (recommended)" update mechanism will be automatically updated to the latest version of Flash Player over the next 24 hours.

Users who have selected "Notify me to install updates" will receive an update notification dialog within 7 days from today. Please note that Windows users will need to restart their system or log out and in to activate the update notification dialog.

Flash Player can always be downloaded and installed by simply visiting https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer

Customers using Google Chrome or Windows 8.x Internet Explorer will receive the update through the Google and Microsoft update mechanisms.

July 14, 2015

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with critical security and functional bug fixes. We recommend all customers upgrade to this version.

July 8, 2015

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with critical security and functional bug fixes.  We recommend all customers upgrade to this version.

June 23, 2015

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with a critical security fix.

June 9, 2015

In today's scheduled release, we've updated Flash Player and AIR with new and improved functionality, important bug fixes and security updates.

We hope you enjoy this release.  If you encounter any problems please us know by posting issues to our public bug database.  For installation or usage help, please visit our community forums for assistance.

Adobe Bug Database - https://bugbase.adobe.com
Flash Player Forums - http://forums.adobe.com/community/flashplayer
AIR Forums - http://forums.adobe.com/community/air

August 11, 2015

Flash Player

• Performance problems with Alchemy libraries [4020231]
• Slides in prerecorded meeting do not display [4017347]
• Player crashes while playing game on Kongregate [4019173] 
• Black Screen is observed when second SWF is loaded [4021075]
• Videos are not loading on "http://www.espnfc.com" [4022883]
• Unable to download files from Flex/Flash web app on Chrome [4021453]
• Text in textfields not displayed on Chrome MAC [4020870]
• Multiple security and functional fixes
  

AIR

• Embedded version of Flash Player has been updated for desktop shared runtime and SDK

July 14, 2015

Flash Player

• Multiple security and functional fixes

July 8, 2015

Flash Player

• Hardware accelerated 3D content does not render in recent versions of Firefox on some Graphics cards [3937398]
• Profile baseline_constraint is not drawing directly into the backbuffer on IE [4010443]
• Increase the number of allowed StageVideo instances to 8. [4006329]

AIR

• Embedded version of Flash Player has been updated for desktop shared runtime and SDK

June 23, 2015

Flash Player

• Security Fix

June 9, 2015

AIR

• [iOS] ld error “ld: in , unsupported address encoding (13) of personality function in CIE for architecture arm64 Compilation failed while executing : ld64 on packaging with WIN SDK. (Bug 3950027)
• [Android] Cannot obtain contex3d in nexus 6 and samsung note 4 having Lollipop 5.1 (3967293
• [iOS] Error occurred while installing the application:Installation Error: PackageExtractionFailed on iOS from Flash Builder (3963902)
• [Android] "Error #3672: Buffer creation failed" while calling createVertexBuffer() to a Texture on Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 (3960859)
• [Android] "Texture format mismatch" while uploading BitmapData to a Texture on Samsung Galaxy Tab (3959595)
• [iOS] App crashes when getting and setting booleans through interfaces. (3964980)
• [Android] Application crashes on playing any flv video using stage video (Bug 3976878)
• [iOS] When a simple App is created with just one List box, it works on the Desktop, but not on iOS. (3979411)
• [Android] Application with video texture applied, flickers on start up. (3965105)
• [Android] Camera miniature is display at top-left corner when StageVideo video is playback whereas working on desktop. (3950651)
• [Android] Camera continous auto focus feature not work on Android even Camera.setMode property set. (3970215)
• [iOS] Parameter firstLine must be non-null" Error on using TLFTextField (3986791)
• [Android] Gamepad does not come up when the device is shaken.
• [Android] Camera flickers continuously on Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Inch ( 3974103)
• [Android] Multiple Hardware accelerated video cannot be played simultaneously (3972400)[Android] FLV video is not working on render modes GPU and Direct while working fine on CPU render mode only with both Mac and Win AIRSDK. (3948210)
  
• ASC 2.0 -inline=true: Compiler crashes with Exception "Generated byte code contains an operand stack underflow." (3979134)
• Press Alt+Enter in mx:textinput results in a new line (3936186)
  
• Multiple security and functional fixes
  

Flash Player

• Offline FLV are running too fast Fast forward mode (3982986)
• Unable to view animated shader effect (3990831)
• Camera output shows black screen in Safari (3980552)
• Right-clicking on JWPlayer causes Firefox to hang on Windows 8 (3835579)
• Inaccurate drawing in IE on Windows 8 (3846567)
• PPAPI Plugin doesn't work on WinXP (3966268)
• Full Screen mode Flash freezes for a few seconds in Safari browser(3916445)
• Starling cannot upload texture from BitmapData in Firefox on Mac (3951802)
• ColorTransform applied to textfield using device font is ignored in Chrome (3959696)
• Zombie Tycoon game show blacked out screen (3924242)Few calendar control present on usflashmap.com stop working (3990982)
• Error #1014  Class flash.display3D.texture::VideoTexture is not found when running on flash player. (3955926)
• StageVideo fails to load error on Mac Firefox on certain configuration (3992751)
• Scrolling on high density displays fails in that child elements do not scroll at the same rate as a parent container. (3746968)
  
• Multiple security and functional fixes
  

• Improved Flash Player Install Process
  

We have had consistent feedback from our customers that they prefer not to shut down their browsers to simply install Flash Player. This feature removes this requirement whenever possible. With Flash Player 18, in the vast majority of cases, the installer will no longer display a dialog to shut down the currently running browsers or applications that are using Flash Player! 

Once the installation is completed, you will be notified that the browser may need to be restarted to use the newly installed version. This requirement depends on your browser’s ability to see the new version.  Either way, Flash will continue to work and you can easily force the new version to appear by simply restarting your browser when it’s convenient for you.

• Audio APIs added to Flash Player NPAPI
  

We have added the ability for NPAPI-compatible browsers and applications to query the player and detect if audio is currently being played and if it can be muted. This new feature will allow applications to alert the user if audio is being played and give them the ability to mute, even if the Flash content does not.  

This new API is not applicable to ActionScript developers and is only available to browser and application developers that host the Flash plugin.

• Stage3D - Standard Extended Profile for Desktop
  

In version 17, Standard Extended Profile was introduced on iOS and Android devices that support GL ES3. In version 18, Standard ExtendedProfile support is added for Flash Player and AIR Desktop. It is represented by a new constant ‘STANDARD_EXTENDED’ in the Context3DProfile class. This constant can be used in the requestContext3D and requestContext3DMatchingProfiles methods of Stage3D. The standardExtended profile can only be accessed if the SWF version is 28 or newer.

The following code demonstrates the usage of Context3dProfile’s constant ‘STANDARD_EXTENDED’:

requestContext3D(null,Context3DRenderMode.AUTO,Context3DProfile.STANDARD_EXTENDED);

The availability of “standardExtended" profile indicates the availability of AGAL3 which increases register limits for vertex attributes, fragment constants and tokens.

• Browser Zoom Factor for PPAPI Plugin and non-Win 8x ActiveX
  

We've introduced a feature that proposes scaling of Flash content in the web browser in response to web page zoom factor change. This feature was already present for Internet Explorer on Window 8.x.  In Flash Player 18, it now supports PPAPI (Opera and Chrome) and Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and below.

Improved Resolution of Stage3D Content on Browser Zoom

• VideoTexture Support for Android

The hugely popular VideoTexture feature has come to Android!  Introduced in version 17 for iOS and desktop, the team has been hard at work and has now brought the full power and functionality of this feature to Android devices. 

VideoTexture is an ActionScript feature that allows hardware-accelerated video to be used as a source texture in a Stage3D environment. Previously, using video with Stage3D requires the use of the Video object, which is not accelerated, and manipulation of the bitmap representations of the video frames. VideoTexture allows direct access to a texture object that is sourced from a Netstream or Camera object.  Please see the VideoTexture blog post for implementation details.

• Build Number in AIR iOS
  

This feature allows developers to simply update the build number while keeping the version number the same so that their application is available quickly on Apple’s Testflight for beta testing.

• ADT Packaging Time Improvement with Support for Parallel Compilation for iOS
  

Air 18 introduces multi-threading support with the compiler for even faster build times. With this improvement, we have gained 20% improvement in packaging time on the top of last improvement which was made in Air 17!

• ETC2 Support for ATF
  

With OpenGL ES 3.0 a new texture compression technique, ETC2 (Ericsson Texture Compression 2), was introduced as a standard feature.

ATF (Adobe Texture Format) is a container format provided by Adobe for different compression formats supported by different platforms. It previously supported three gpu texture compression formats; DXT1/5(desktop), ETC1 (Ericsson Texture Compression 1) (Android) and PVRTC (iOS). In AIR SDK 18, ETC2 support has been added (Ericsson Texture Compression 2) in ATF. Now app developers can use ATF with ETC2 on both Android and iOS devices that are OpenGL ES 3.0 compliant.

This feature is enabled with swf-version 29.

ATF tools (png2atf, pvr2atf, atfinfo and atfviewer) are upgraded to provide support for etc2 for ATF. These tools will be available in the AIR SDKunder AIRSDK/atftools directory.

Guide to use Updated ATF Tools (png2atf):

Changes In png2atf Command Line Options

Png2atf command line options (OLD BEHAVIOR)

-c (DEFAULT)  - creates ATF with etc1+pvrtc+dxt
-c e  - creates ATF with etc1 only (android)
-c p  - creates ATF with pvrtc only (iOS)
-c d  - creates ATF with dxt only (desktop)

For more information about ATF tools you can review the atftools user guide which is present under directory AIRSDK/atftools.

Png2atf command line options (NEW BEHAVIOR)

Use new switch e2 for etc2 format:

-c e2  - creates ATF with etc2

ATF tools provide developers the flexibility to form ATF file using any combination of the four compression formats (dxt, etc1, pvrtc, etc2) by using comma separators between the switches for different compression formats.

-c (DEFAULT)  - creates ATF file etc1+pvrtc+dxt +etc2

For example:

-c e  - creates ATF with etc1 only (android)
-c p  - creates ATF with pvrtc only (iOS)
-c d  - creates ATF with dxt only (desktop)
-c e2  - creates ATF with etc2 only (works on android & iOS supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 and above)
-c d, e2,p  - creates ATF with dxt, etc2 and pvrtc compression
-c e,p  - creates ATF with etc1 and pvrtc compression

And all other possible combinations using these switches - e, p , d and e2

Similarly for pvr2atf tool (New Behavior)

Use new argument e2 for etc2 format

e2 - creates ATF file from etc2 pvr

e.g. pvr2atf –e2 etc2.pvr –o sample.atf

The ATF version has also been incremented and is now version 3.

Please note: The runtime will fall back to software decoding of etc2 compressed textures on devices not supporting Opengl ES 3.0 and above if any other gpusupported compression format is not present in atf file.

Currently this feature is only applicable for Mobile devices. On AIR Desktop and Flash, we fallback to software rendering for ETC2.  

No ActionScript code changes are required to be done in existing applications to use version 3 ATFs (with etc2 support).

For a full list of features in Flash Player and AIR, including features introduced in previous releases, please review the document here

AIR

• [Android]: On unloading multiple video textures, video unloads but audio keeps playing.(3988675)
• [Android] Green strip appears at bottom of video texture for hardware accelerated videos on lenovo yoga tablet. (3988668)
• [iOS] Portrait keyboard appears in a landscape application on coming back from a camera roll UI, when device is kept on a flat surface. (3939049)
• [Win]: The IPA file does not get generated on the respective iOS devices while publishing 'AIR for iOS' with localized file name OR having localized character in path of provisioning file. (3941829)
• [iOS]  Application orientation changes from portrait to landscape , if device is rotated to landscape while browsing gallery. (3993869)
• [Android] App is opening to upside position when phone/tablet is rotated to 90 clockwise position and then a landscape orientated app is launched from that position. (3992477)
• [iOS]  App Crash if it tries to write a value to an uninitialised vector. (3990377)
• [iOS Device]Error #3747: Multiple application domains are not supported on this operating system.Execution halted in at 0xffffffff (3990014)
• [Android]: Rear Camera output from x86 device (AMD or Intel) is blurred having red areas however front camera having no such issues. (3994433)
  
• ASC2.0 compiled app reports a Type Coercion error with MovieClips in SWC (3578605)
• Graphical glitches when rotating an element inside of a sprite on Windows (3949851)
• PopUp shows data from the background main screen. (3945060)
• Frequent disconnects for AIR applications on Windows (3987532)
  

Flash Player

• Embedded Flash objects stop working in SMART Notebook [4015165]
• Display magnification results different in different version of Flash Player [4015059]
• Resizing to the wrong resolution when using multiple monitors [3979543]
• Flash Player volume mixer settings reset every time Firefox is closed. [3825853]
  

Authoring for Flash Player 18

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 29 by passing "-swf-version=29" as an extra compiler argument to the ASC 2.0 compiler.  Detailed directions are below.

• Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 18
• Download and install Flash Builder 4.7 from Creative Cloud: https://creative.adobe.com/products/flash-builder
• Backup the existing AIR SDK if you need to restore it later then replace the bundled AIR SDK with the AIR 18 SDK.  To do this, unzip the AIR 18 SDK to this location:
  • MacOS: /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4.7/eclipse/plugins/com.adobe.flash.compiler_4.7.0.348297/AIRSDK
  • Windows: 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 "-swf-version=29" to the 'Additional compiler arguments' field.
  • This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 29.  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 18 build in your browser.

Authoring for AIR 18 Update to the AIR 18 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 18 namespace in order to access the new AIR 18 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 18 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users start using the AIR 18 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new 18 capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/18.0">

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