Adobe pushes out Flash Player 11 and AIR 3

Adobe has released Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, the latest versions of its rich media application products.

The two updated software packages appeared on Monday, conforming with a schedule announced last month. In a blog post, senior product manager Tom Nguyen highlighted new features such as Stage 3D graphics rendering, which will be available for Mac OS, Windows and connected TV sets.

"With up to 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2, developers can animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver cinematic, console-quality games both in browsers and in apps," Nguyen wrote.

Flash Player is Adobe's ubiquitous browser plug-in for running or displaying ever-less-ubiquitous Flash content, while AIR is Adobe's system for wrapping Flash apps in self-contained packages so that they can run outside the browser.

AIR 3 is notable for the being the first version of the platform that lets people run AIR apps without preinstalling AIR itself.

Nguyen also noted that the Proscenium 3D framework technology preview, which lets Flash Builder developers "rapidly prototype experiences", is now available on Adobe Labs. A game called Whack! has also been released to demonstrate Adobe's new Starling 2D framework.

The product manager also welcomed the addition of Nitobi to the Adobe stable. Nguyen said Nitobi's PhoneGap open-source programming tool would help developers "benefit from a workflow that allows them to choose the right tool for the right job", a reference to the fact that PhoneGap is aimed at building HTML5 rather than Flash apps.