June 10, 2010

Flash Player goes Cocoa, makes a host of improvements

Flash Player 10.1 is here, ready for download, making tons of improvements in rendering efficiency and memory usage. Engineering manager Paul Betlem has provided extensive details on the team blog.

Being a Mac user, I was particularly happy to hear about Mac-specific improvements & the fruits of the team’s collaboration with Apple’s Safari team:

“First and foremost, Flash Player 10.1 is a full-fledged Cocoa app (though legacy Carbon support remains for some browsers that require it). We now leverage Cocoa events, use Cocoa UI for our dialogs, leverage Core Audio for sound, Core Graphics for printing support, and use Core Foundation for bundle-style text… The overall performance improvements of Flash Player for Mac users will result in faster video playback, more efficient CPU utilization, and greater battery life.”

Check out the full post for details on smoother video playback, DVR-style seeking, and much more.

As for mobile devices, FP 10.1 is available in beta form on the Android OS, with the finished version available shortly. Here’s a demo of a 3D flight simulator running in Flash on a Nexus One.

(rt) Motion: Killer movie titles & more

• The Art of the Title Sequence features the great “Up in the Air” opening title sequence plus an interview w/its creators. [Via]
• The same site shows the beautiful, illustrative Sherlock Holmes end credit sequence. [Via]
• Check out some fascinating slow-motion launch footage from Apollo 11.
• “The Empire Strikes Back” gets re-imagined as an old-timey movie serial from 1950. [Via]
• Buck has created a terrific animation of a world made from paint chips. [Via]