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Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta released

Teaser
The new version includes a new Stage Video API and support for hardware acceleration in IE9

Creative-suite maker Adobe has come up with yet another iteration of its widely used Flash platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. The Adobe Flash Player 10.2 has been introduced for the first time ever as a beta release. So what’s new with the 10.2 beta release? Well Adobe, in an official press statement, says that Stage Video, a new API that delivers best-in-class and high performance video playback across platforms, has made a debut through this release along with support for Internet Explorer 9 hardware acceleration. Also on offer are enhanced text rendering, a native custom mouse cursors API and support for full screen playback with multiple monitors. The latter two features have been included upon request from the developer community.

Talking of the Stage Video API, it will help web sites deliver smooth, beautiful video across devices and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline. Using the Flash 10.2 beta, you can watch high-resolution videos with ease, with very little CPU utilization. In fact, if Adobe is to be believed, their testing has seen laptops playing full HD (1080p) videos with just over 0% CPU usage smoothly. That apart, the Internet Explorer 9 hardware acceleration support feature has been tested to offer a 35% improvement in rendering performance for the upcoming browser. Also, now, Flash Player 10.2 beta users can enjoy watching videos in true full screen on one display while multi-tasking on another.

Currently, the Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta is available for download for developers from Adobe Labs. Demo videos displaying the capabilities of Stage Video are also available on the Adobe Labs website.

Flash Player is installed at over 90% of the PCs worldwide; with more than 65% of the website use it to display content like videos, streaming media and games. Flash Player 10.1 was a major release from the San-Jose based software company in terms of its capacity to accelerate graphics cards, saving the CPU any blushes.

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Pallab Jyotee Hazarika, 2010-12- 2 (Update: 2012-05-26)