Release Notes | Flash Player® 21 AIR® 21

Welcome to the Flash Player and AIR 21 release notes!

May 12, 2016

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

April 21, 2016

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player NPAPI for OSX to resolve a bug that was impacting certain Mac video cards.

April 12, 2016

In today's release, we've updated AIR with important bug fixes and security updates.

April 8, 2016

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player for Google Chrome to address a bug that was causing the Flash Player context menu to appear when right clicking, even if the content attempted to suppress it.

April 7, 2016

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with important bug fixes and security updates.

March 23, 2016

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player with an important bug fix that was affecting a subset of Flash gaming content.

March 10, 2016

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

How to update Flash Player

Current Flash Player customers who have enrolled in the "Allow Adobe to install updates (recommended)" update mechanism will be automatically updated to the latest version of Flash Player within 24 hours after release.

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

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

Customers using Google Chrome or Windows 8.x/10 Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge will receive updates through the Google and Microsoft update mechanisms.

How to contact us

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

May 12, 2016

Flash Player

• Truncation and printing issues on http://www.usflashmap.com/ (4129993)
• [Pepper Only] Issues with Custom Right click handling of flash player (4136373)
• Space metacharacter (\s) is no longer including non-breaking spaces (\xA0) (4137804)
  

AIR

• [iOS][Win]IPA packaged on Windows machine cannot be submitted to the Apple App store. Error "This build is invalid" occurs in iTunes connect (4144943)

April 21, 2016

Flash Player

• Fixed instability issues encountered with certain Mac video cards

April 12, 2016

AIR

• Publisher Unknown warning during installation on Mac OSX with Adobe AIR 21 [4132039]

April 8, 2016

Flash Player

• [PPAPI Chrome] Right click handler broken in 21.0.0.213 in Google Chrome [4136275]

April 7, 2016

Flash Player

• API changed with DisplayObject.scrollRect that broke backwards compatibility [4130875]
• Animal Jam mini/micro games quits unexpectedly after minimal playtime [4130309]
• Gapminder World gives OOM message [4127403]
• [Mac][NPAPI] Framerate gets accelerated on when calling JavaScript from Flash on enterFrame [4127305]
• Error 1508 The value specified for argument sourceRect is invalid, is thrown [4118087]
   

March 23, 2016

Flash Player

• Significant performance degradation while reading/writing LSOs [4127545]

March 10, 2016

Flash Player

• Browser freezes on playing a gaming SWF [4109643]
• Flash content freezes in a game developed in ActionScript2 [4109228]
• OOM observed in an educational program [4111701]
• gotoAndStop works incorrectly [4109904]
• Windows 10 Firefox: Mic access not working [4040485]
  

AIR

• AIR Apps created from Version 20 SDK not accepted in MAC App store [4109779]
• AIR application quits unexpectedly while creating a Netgroup inside an AS3 worker [4081973]
• [iOS] Fails to link ImageIO.framework when targeting iOS (4113460)
• [Android] GPU mode apps crash on devices with Tegra K1 GPU. (4110848)
• Android 6 : Stage3D AIR application fails to return from background (4075177)
• ATF textures (with JPEG Compression) are not rendered properly on MALI GPU. [4073529]
• [iOS] Packaging error appears in Flex app having TextField for non-interpretor (e.g. Ipa-app-store) mode on Macintosh (4111322)
• [iOS & Android] Icon files get duplicated when packaging iOS, Android versions (4100164)
• [iOS] Crash when debugging on iOS 7 (4079709)
• [iOS] On compiling empty app using Xcode 7.2 to iOS Simulator in Adobe CC 2015, throws an error. (4103483)
• [iOS] Wrong rotation in IOS 7 (4098845)
• [iOS] Flash Pro doesn't remember the application version number when AIR SDK is changed to 20.0. (4088603)
• [iOS] ld: library not found for -lstdc++ error in Windows 10 while packaging an IPA using -platformsdk flag (4101836)
  

GPU Memory Information In Context3D

When a Context3D object is created, developers allocate memory for various Stage3D structures which includes index buffers, vertex buffers, textures, and programs. Prior to Flash and AIR 21, the only way to verify the memory allocated by the current Context3D is through values displayed by Scout. With the release of Flash Player and AIR 21, a new property of context3D class called "totalGPUMemory" has been introduced which provides the sum of gpu memory used by the index buffers, vertex buffers, textures, and programs created through Context3D.

The total value can be obtained by property "Context3D.totalGPUMemory;".

The value of this property is in bytes and its default value is 0. The information is only provided in direct mode on mobile and in direct and gpu mode on desktop (On desktop computers, using <renderMode>gpu</renderMode> will fallback to <renderMode>direct</renderMode>). This property can be used when the SWF version is 32 or more.

 

Support for Browser Zoom Factor in Firefox

We’ve extended the support for Browser Zoom Feature that proposes scaling of Flash content in the web browser in response to web page zoom factor change. This feature is already available for the ActiveX and PPAPI plugin (link).

It will be available from Flash Player version 21 on wards and is currently available on Firefox Nightly 45.0a1, the official Firefox version supporting the feature has yet to be announced.

 

PPAPI vector printing on OSX

As of Flash Player version 19, Vector Printing has only been available for NPAPI while PPAPI supported only bitmap printing. Hence there was an observable difference in printing quality between NPAPI and PPAPI (with NPAPI being better). In version 20 we added vector printing support for PPAPI on Windows.  Now in version 21, we have introduced vector printing for PPAPI for OSX, thus giving a better printing experience from PPAPI supported browsers and applications. The bitmap printing functionality will continue to be supported and used when requested by the content.

 

Simplified LSO UI

Flash player provides an per domain/swf option to store locally shared objects on user's system. In the past, users could specify the size up to which a domain or SWF could save their LSOs on their machine. We have now simplified the LSO UI Options. This Simple LSO feature will change the permission scheme and related dialogs to only allow/deny and universally imposes a rational upper limit to the LSO size. End users will no longer be able to specify the size of LSOs (but will be able to approve if LSOs can be created or not).

 

Media Auto Play for iOS & Android

Starting in AIR 21, we have introduced Media Auto Play support for AIR iOS & Android applications. With this feature, ActionScript developers can enable auto play for media inside their applications. To enable this, autoplay should also be enabled in the HTML5 video tag. (More info on HTML5 StageWebView video tag : http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_video.asp).

Please use swf-version 32 or greater and namespace 21.0 or greater to access this feature.

var webView:StageWebView = new StageWebView();

webView.stage = stage;

webView.viewPort = new Rectangle( 0, 0, 400, 300 );

webView.mediaPlaybackRequiresUserAction = false;// To enable autoplay in given web view

webView.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, <handleComplete>);

webView.addEventListener(ErrorEvent.ERROR, <handleError>);

webView.loadURL("http://any/webpage/with/autoplay/enabled/video.html”)

 

Android StageWebView debugging

Starting in AIR 21, StageWebView Debugging will allow developers to debug web content (HTML / CSS / JavaScript) used in AIR Android applications. An ActionScript developer needs to add the webContentsDebuggingEnabled option to true in the application descriptor to allow StageWebView debugging in their AIR application. From there, simply connect your Android device to your machine via USB cable and navigate to chrome://inspect to debug embedded web content in your AIR application. This feature is available on Android 4.4 and higher devices.  Google Chrome should be version 45 or higher.

Please use namespace 21.0 or greater to access this feature.

<android>

<!-- Indicates if webContents(HTML/CSS/JavaScript) can be inspected in browser. It is Optional, Default value is 'false' -->

<webContentsDebuggingEnabled>true</webContentsDebuggingEnabled>

</android>

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

Flash Player

• Flash Player quits if the "totalFrames" property of a loaded volatile MovieClip is accessed (4127339)
  

AIR

• [Android] Read "position" property of the async opened FileStream after writing data from Socket cause application crash (4123440)
• [iOS]Crash if Class used in Main and Background worker is a CustomClass (4068748)
  
• [WIN10][StageWebView]Some uppercase letters can't be entered in a form input [4091451]
  

Authoring for Flash Player 21

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 32 by passing "-swf-version=32" as an extra compiler argument to the ASC 2.0 compiler.  Detailed directions are below.

• Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 21
• 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 21 SDK.  To do this, unzip the AIR 21 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=32" to the 'Additional compiler arguments' field.
  • This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 32.  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 21 build in your browser.

Authoring for AIR 21 Update to the AIR 21 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 21 namespace in order to access the new AIR 21 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 21 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users start using the AIR 21 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new 21 capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/21.0">

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