Release Notes | Flash Player® 25 AIR® 25

Welcome to the Flash Player and AIR 25 release notes!

May 9, 2017

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

April 20, 2017

In today's release, we've updated Flash Player macOS NPAPI with a fix that improves the workflow for users when launching applications like Adobe Connect.

April 11, 2017

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

March 14, 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

May 9, 2017

Flash Player

• Previous slide's video's audio keeps playing even when next slide is loaded (FLASH-4187660)

April 20, 2017

Flash Player

• [macOS] Fixed extraneous dialog that could appear when launching an application via ProductManager

April 11, 2017

Flash Player

• [Windows] Flash player unresponsive after connecting with the socket.(FP-4198296)

March 14, 2017

Flash Player

• Pressing Space bar in the Text Field makes the app behave abnormally.( FP-4198253)
• Flash Player 24.0.0.221 quits unexpectedly(FP-4198250)
• Wacom tablet click inputs doesn't work with latest chrome version 55 (FLASH-4187112)
• Unresponsive behavior is observed for microphone on Windows 10/FireFox (FP- 4061929)
• [Windows 10] Movie reload or restart playing when user clicks "SPACE" key. (FP-4198252)
• Multiple security and functional fixes

AIR

• [Android] Allocations made by async texture upload are not freed up after multiple asynchronous uploads(AIR-4198245)
• [Android] Framerate of application is very low in PowerVR GPU while using renderMode as GPU(AIR-4174521).
• Unable to install the application on iOS Simulator(AIR-4198023)
• TEXTURE_READY event is dispatched very soon when uploading the RectangleTexture repeatedly(AIR-4198247)
• [iOS]Starling apps using starling.image.mask quits unexpectedly on low-end devices(4187140)
• [MAC] Adobe AIR_64 Helper and ExtendedAppEntryTemplate64 creates problems while codesigning MAC Captive App.(AIR-4189809)
• Starling does not display any content on Integrated GPU Intel HD Graphics with AIR 24 (AIR-4198176, AIR-4198227)
• flash.ui.GameInput fires DEVICE_ADDED / DEVICE_REMOVED events in an endless loop (AIR-4198163)

The AIR Runtime is now built with the iOS 10 SDK, which enables AIR developers to use ANEs built with iOS 10 APIs without using the –platformSDK switch while packaging with ADT.

AIR 22 had significant changes to the Android Video pipeline. For more information, see the Release Notes for that release. If your application is facing issues because of these changes, starting AIR 25, you can fallback to the older video pipeline using a new tag named <disableMediaCodec> in the application descriptor to enable/disable MediaCodec for Android.  When setting this flag as true MediaCodec is disabled and video is decoded using OpenMax AL just like in AIR 21. The default value for this tag is false.

Sample snippet:
Here is an example code snippet for disabling MediaCodec.

Starting with AIR 25 (with swf version 36 and above) we have introduced a new API for ActionScript developers to determine if their application is running with the compiled runtime or interpreted runtime. The new API “isCompiledAOT” has been added to the NativeApplication class.

This API returns true if the application is built using one of the following AOT targets:

• ipa-app-store
• ipa-test
• ipa-debug
• ipa-ad-hoc

This API returns false for any other iOS target and other AIR platforms like AIR android and AIR desktop.

Starting with AIR 25 (with swf version 36 and above), local storage in StageWebView is now available for Android.  Sites that require local DOM storage will work as expected on StageWebView. 

Sample snippet:

For example, the below HTML page will load correctly in StageWebView using AIR 25.

Starting in AIR 25, we have added support for the following languages:

• Danish (da)
• Norwegian (nb)
• Hebrew (iw)

Note: To use these languages, the Namespace value in the application descriptor must be 25.0 or greater.

Sample Snippet:

Starting in AIR 25, MultiDex support is available for Android. Through MultiDexing, developers can package apps that exceed the 64K references limit. Usually, the 64K references limit is reached when ANEs contain many methods.

More information on Android Multidex can be found here: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html.

Note: If you use ANEs containing pre-dex libraries, there will be a packaging error when you try to package them.

Beginning in AIR 25, capturing current buffer data of the back render buffer through drawToBitmapData() allows offsets for capturing a target rectangle from buffer instead of complete buffer.

The feature is supported on Windows, Mac, iOS and android platforms.

Background:
drawToBitmapdata(BitmapData) is used to draw the current render buffer to a destination bitmap. It used to take a bitmap input to which it would copy the complete buffer content.

Offset Implementation:
Starting AIR 25, the API drawToBitmapData( destination:BitmapData, srcRect:Rectangle = null, destPoint:Point = null) copies a particular target area from the buffer and copies it to the bitmap.

The API takes the following inputs:

• Destination Bitmap(Bitmap): Bitmap to which rendered buffer data would be copied to
• Source Rectangle(srcRect): Rectangle defined on the back render buffer, from which the data would be copied
• Destination point(destPoint): Offset on the bitmap where the data will be copied to

This can be understood by the following demonstration:

Some important points:

• If the source rectangle goes beyond the current render buffer, the rectangle part extending beyond the dimensions of the buffer is clipped, this is similar to the target area of Stage3D as in the representation above.
• If the target area selected in the above step goes beyond the dimensions of the bitmap, the part extending beyond bitmap is clipped.
• The actual target area would be final bitmap data according to the rectangle size and the bitmap size and offsets chosen.
• In case, the offsets (destination offset, source rectangle offset) falls out of the dimensions or are set negative, “Error #3802: Offset outside stage coordinate bound” would be thrown.
• If the values for source rectangle and the destination offset is set null, the API falls back to the older implementation where the complete buffer is copied to the bitmap.
  

Instanced drawing feature which was available for AIR Mobile is now available in AIR Desktop. This feature helps developers to use a model of graphical object and render it multiple times in a single frame. This reduces draw calls and hence rendering and overall performance is smoother.

Similar to AIR Mobile, to use this feature on Desktop ,developers can use the createVertexBufferForIntance() and drawTriangleInstanced() APIs.

Context3D::createVertexBufferForInstances( numElements:int, data32PerElement:int, instancesPerElement:int, bufferUsage:String = "staticDraw", ):VertexBuffer3D;

Use the VertexBuffer3D object to upload a set of instance data to the rendering context. The vertex buffer contains the data needed to render each instance in the scene geometry. Vertex Buffers with instance data provide attributes that are common to all the vertices of an instance and serve as the input to the vertex shader program.

Context3D::drawTrianglesInstanced( indexBuffer:IndexBuffer3D, numInstances, firstIndex:int=0, numTriangles:int=-1 ):void;

AGAL version 3 with “iid” register can be downloaded from:

https://github.com/adobe-flash/graphicscorelib/tree/master/src/com/adobe/utils/v3

Assumptions and Dependencies

1. This feature is supported only on devices that support Standard Extended Profile
2. This feature is only available in AIR Mobile and Desktop.
   

With Flash Player 24 release, we provided users with a fine-grained control over how permissions are granted for their camera and microphone data. These settings are visible in the Global Settings Manager and Native Control Panel for Mac and Windows.With the latest update, users can customize these settings from the Native Control Panel for both HTTP and HTTPS on Linux too.

• [iOS] Application crashes on using a feather textInput
• [iOS] Dictionary containing values of type Vector.<Function> result in hidden String allocations (AIR-4115729)
• [iOS] Compilation failed while executing : compile-abc - Class (...) could not be found. (AIR-4198225)
• [Android] Launcher icons are packaged in incorrect resources location (AIR-4198222)
• [iOS] Interfaces don't function when shared between swf’s (AIR-4194914)
• [iOS] Crash when trying to access function arguments (AIR-4117964)

Authoring for Flash Player 25

To use the new Flash Player, you will need to target SWF version 36 by passing "-swf-version=36" as an extra compiler argument to the ASC 2.0 compiler.  Detailed directions are below.

• Download the new playerglobal.swc for Flash Player 25
• 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 25 SDK.  To do this, unzip the AIR 25 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=36" to the 'Additional compiler arguments' field.
  • This ensures the outputted SWF targets SWF version 36.  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 25 build in your browser.

Authoring for AIR 25 Update to the AIR 25 namespace

You must update your application descriptor file to the 25 namespace in order to access the new AIR 25 APIs and behavior. If your application does not require the new AIR 25 APIs and behavior, you are not required to update the namespace. However, we recommend all users start using the AIR 25 namespace even if you are not yet taking advantage of the new 25 capabilities. To update the namespace, change the xmlns attribute in your application descriptor to: <application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/25.0">

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