Adobe Flash 11 announced amidst fresh zero-day scare

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Adobe today launched the latest iteration of Flash Player, as fresh security concerns hit the company’s video platform.

Alongside Adobe AIR 3, Adobe Flash 11 is aimed at providing developers with the tools to create high-quality, 3D video content.

Despite a host of new features for both pieces of software, Adobe will be hoping its latest products do not have as many security flaws as previous models.

Adobe announced yesterday it had scheduled a critical security update for Flash Player to cover a vulnerability which has reportedly been exploited.

“This update will address critical security issues in the product as well as an important universal cross-site scripting issue that is reportedly being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks,” Adobe said in a notification.

The update is due to go out today.

New features

Outside of security worries, Adobe said it added dozens of features in Flash 11 and Air 3, many focusing on providing capabilities for 3D games.

The new version of Flash delivers 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10, Adobe said in a blog post.

The extra power comes thanks to a new framework for hardware accelerated graphics rendering, known as Stage 3D.

“Stage 3D enables content that efficiently animate millions of objects on screen, smoothly rendered at 60 frames per second,” Adobe said.

“With stunning hardware accelerated graphics, mature dynamic audio, immersive full screen, native support for mouse/multi-touch/camera input, low-latency peer-to-peer multiplayer networking, full HD 1080p video playback, and high-quality voice chat, Flash Player provides the building blocks for incredible games.”

Adobe’s new software is due to land in October.

Windows 8 compatibility

Microsoft recently revealed Adobe Flash would not be supported in the Metro version of its Windows 8 OS, citing performance, efficiency and security reasons. Apple decided not to support the Flash plug-in for similar reasons in iOS.

Adobe said Flash still has a future in Windows 8 and not just in the desktop version, also pointing to its commitment to providing HTML5 capabilities to developers.

“We expect Flash based apps will come to Metro via Adobe AIR, much the way they are on Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS today, including the recent number one paid app for the iPad on the Apple App Store, Machinarium, which is built using Flash tools and deployed on the web using Flash Player and through app stores as a standalone app,” said Adobe’s Danny Winokur in a blog post.

“We are working closely with Microsoft, Google, Apple and others in the HTML community to drive innovation in HTML5, to make it as rich as possible for delivering world-class content on the open web and through app stores.”

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