Release Notes | Flash Player® 26 AIR® 26

Welcome to the Flash Player and AIR 26 release notes!

July 11, 2017

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

June 16, 2017

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player to address a bug that was impacting some Flash content.  If you are having problems interacting with mouse button presses or drag and drop actions, we recommend you update to today's release.

June 13, 2017

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

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 let 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://tracker.adobe.com/
Flash Player Forums - http://forums.adobe.com/community/flashplayer
AIR Forums - http://forums.adobe.com/community/air

July 11, 2017

Flash Player

• FileReference size and creationDate throws IO Error (FP-4198482)

AIR

• Drag and drop is not working as expected with AIR runtime 26(AIR-4198378, AIR-4198374, AIR-4198376, AIR-4198375)
• Copy of elements are created in the initial list when drag and dropped to the new list.( AIR-4198373)
• NativeDragEvent.NATIVE_DRAG_COMPLETE is not triggered with AIR 26 (AIR-4198381)

June 16, 2017

Flash Player

• Buttons can't be clicked in some AS2 content (FP-4198473)

June 13, 2017

Flash Player

• removeMovieClip() method is not working as expected(FP-4198425,FP-4198400)
• http://catalog.kaientai.cc viewer application quits unexpectedly. (FP-4198403)
• Video quits unexpectedly while playing from http://tw.youvivid.com/preview_showcase.asp (FP-4198402)
• Flash Player quits unexpectedly upon interaction with site tabs(FP-4198407)
• [Win 10]Incorrect KeyboardEvent CharCode while shift is pressed(or Capslock)(FP-4198430)
• FileReference size and creationDate throws IO Error (FP-4198443)
• [Win10][ Edge]Mouse Move events are delayed when full screen is set to interactive mode and mouse lock is true.( FP-4198071, FP-4173060)

AIR

• [iOS] drawViewPortToBitmapData method on StageWebView return an empty bitmapdata
• [iOS] AudioPlaybackMode.VOICE and SoundMixer.useSpeakerphoneForVoice = true not working with bluetooth headset (AIR-4196360)
• [Android] StageText not firing ENTER event (AIR-4198260)
• [iOS] Unable to launch iPad Pro on iOS Simulator from ADT (AIR-4198314)
• [Android] Launcher icons are packaged in incorrect resources location (AIR-4198222)
• [iOS] Starling masking does not work on iOS with anti-aliasing turned ON (AIR-4198229)
• [iOS] ErrorEvent.ERROR not fired (AIR-4198355)
• [iOS] StageText: setting stage property after calling selectRange() incorrectly gives focus to StageText (AIR-4198296)
• "Could not generate timestamp: Connection error" is displayed while packaging the AIR application (AIR-4195221, AIR-4198332, AIR-4172255)
  

Starting AIR 26, For StageWebView on iOS, we now use WKWebView (instead of UIWebView) behind the scene, which uses the WebKit engine to render WebViews. For more information on WKWebView, see https://developer.apple.com/reference/webkit/wkwebview. This change does not impact ActionScript developers directly.  However, because of a few known WebKit bugs, there may be some workflow changes in existing iOS Apps.  Please report any issues found on Adobe AIR forums so we may investigate.

This change also allows developers to debug StageWebView content in iOS. To enable web inspector on iOS, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap Safari.
3. Scroll down and select Advanced.

4. Switch Web Inspector to ON.

5. After Web Inspector is enabled, connect your device to your desktop machine with a USB cable. The name of your device appears in the Develop menu of Safari.

Alternately, developers can use iOS Simulator to take advantage of Web Inspector’s debugging capabilities. Use the same instructions to enable Web Inspector on iOS, from within the iOS Simulator’s Settings app.

This feature brings back vector printing in Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 and Immersive IE in Windows 8 in "Out of Process" mode.  This feature will not only enhance the speed of printing but also reduce the data size input.  Initially, a mixed way to print (GDI Vector + D2D Bitmap) has been used in ActiveX Windows 8.1 and above.  Now Vector printing will be done through D2D APIs in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.  There is no difference in the Actionscript API’s.

When a device is rotated, the orientation of the plane defining device screen changes. This change can be depicted in terms of a Rotation Vector, which can be represented by Roll-Pitch-Yaw or Quaternions data. The DeviceRotation event handler is used to fetch this data. One scenario where this data can be useful is to update the viewport of spherical videos when the device is rotated.

This event handler has been introduced in AIR 26, where we have added a new DeviceRotation class which dispatches DeviceRotationEvent based on the activity detected by the device's
motion sensors namely Accelerometer and Gyroscope.

DeviceRotation object

The user can create an object of DeviceRotation class and can access its properties or register for events on this object. For example:

DeviceRotation.isSupported returns true if the following conditions are satisfied:

• The device has Accelerometer and Gyroscope sensors.
• Android devices with versions 4.3(JELLY_BEAN_MR2) and above.
• iOS devices with versions 4.0 and above.

DeviceRotationEvent.UPDATE is the event, attached to a DeviceRotation object. The event is used in the following scenarios:

• When a new listener function is attached using addEventListener.
• When the value of the DeviceRotation vector changes, this event is delivered at some device-determined interval.
• When the player may have missed a change in the DeviceRotation (for example, if the player is waking up after sleep), this event is delivered.

DeviceRotationEvent object

When an update event is fired on the DeviceRotation object, it is caught as a DeviceRotationEvent object. For example:

Properties for DeviceRotationEvent are exposed as:

• Timestamp - The duration in milliseconds from the application launch time.
• Roll, along Y-Axis - Its unit is Number and the value is an angle in degrees.
• Pitch, along X-Axis - Its unit is Number and the value is an angle in degrees.
• Yaw, along Z-Axis - Its unit is Number and the value is an angle in degrees.
• Quaternion - It is an array that represents the quaternion values in [w, x, y, z] format.

With AIR 26, we are introducing a new stage3D profile "Enhanced" for AIR Mobile.
This will be a new constant in Context3DProfile class. Availability of "enhanced" profile indicates the availability of AGAL4. The same profile name can be used in requestContext3D and requestContext3DMatchingProfiles methods of Stage3D.

AGAL 4 introduces a new opcode "tld" and new Vertex Sampler register "vs" for fetching texture in a vertex shader. 'tld' is similar to 'tex' opcode used in the fragment shader. But unlike 'tex' opcode, 'tld' requires a level of detail ( LOD ) value for parameter since GPU does not support the automatic calculation of LOD in the vertex shader.

The latest version of AGAL is available at https://github.com/adobe-flash/graphicscorelib/tree/master/src/com/adobe/utils

With the introduction of new Stage3D profile i.e. 'ENHANCED', Vertex Texture Fetch is now available in AIR mobile. Texture Data will be available in Vertex Shader using AGAL4 and Enhanced profile.

AGAL 4 introduces a new opcode "tld" and new Vertex Sampler register "vs" for fetching texture in the vertex shader. 'tld' is similar to 'tex' opcode used in the fragment shader. But unlike 'tex' opcode, 'tld' requires a level of detail ( LOD ) value as a parameter since GPU does not support the automatic calculation of LOD in the vertex shader.

tld usage:

dst: a destination register for the sampler texture pixel

src: a register containing texture coordinate where the pixel is sampled and containing a level of detail indication as an index of mipmap to use.

The XY components of the src register: a texture coordinate where a texture pixel is sampled.  The z component will be used for indicating the side of the cube map texture if the vertex texture is a cube map.

The w component of the src register: an index of mipmap to use, with a value range from 0 to n-1 where n is the total number of the mipmaps.  The zero index indicates a mipmap in the highest resolution.  The fractional part of src.w is how much a selected mipmap would be interpolated with the next level of the mipmap in lower resolution based on the mipmap filter (mipnearest or miplinear) passed in the shader or set from the setSamplerStateAt() API.  Mipnearest uses nearest-neighbor mipmap, while miplinear uses linearly filtered mipmapping.

vertex sampler 'vs'

The above example code fetches texture pixels from the texture bound to vertex sampler 0 (vs0) to a vertex temporary register 0 (vt0) with a texture coordinate provided in a vertex attribute register 0 (va0) and a sampler state(< 2d, linear, miplinear >) provided in the vertex shader. The LOD value is provided in va0.w in the example.

A total number of vertex samplers available will be 4. The sum of vertex and fragment samplers is restricted to 16.

Please note that tld opcode cannot be used inside fragment sampler.

To provide a texture for a vertex sampler in the vertex shader, developers should use existing ActionScript API, SetTextureAt().

The above example code binds 'texture' to the vertex sampler 0 (vs0). Note that this call would set up 'texture' to the fragment sampler in the same index, which is the fragment sampler 0 (fs0), if there is access to fs0 in the fragment shader.

A sampler state of the vertex sampler in the vertex shader code could be overridden with the existing AS API, SetSamplerStateAt:

Like the SetTextureAt API, the above call would also set up the state of the fragment sampler in the same index, which is the fragment sampler 0 (fs0), if fs0 is used in the fragment shader.

Please note, Anisotropic Filtering is not available for texture sampling used in vertex shaders.

Vertex Texture Fetch feature is useful for a number of effects like displacement mapping, water simulation, and explosion mapping etc.
 

• None

Flash Player

• 2.5D rotation: rotationX and rotationY rendering issues (FP-4198483)
  

Authoring for Flash Player 26

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 37 by passing "-swf-version=37" as an extra compiler argument to the ASC 2.0 compiler.  Detailed directions are below.

• Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 26
• 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 26 SDK.  To do this, unzip the AIR 26 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=37" to the 'Additional compiler arguments' field.
  • This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 37.  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 26 build in your browser.

Authoring for AIR 26 Update to the AIR 26 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 26 namespace in order to access the new AIR 26 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 26 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users start using the AIR 26 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new 26 capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/26.0">

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