Adobe Flash Player 10 Public Beta Now on Adobe Labs

Major New Creative Features Will Transform Rich Internet Experiences

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced that the pre-release version of Adobe Flash Player 10 software is now available in beta on Adobe Labs with new expressive features for interactive designers and developers to build richer and more immersive Web experiences. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta, code named “Astro,” builds on the capabilities of the world’s most pervasive application runtime with new support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, extensible rich text layout and GPU hardware acceleration — helping to enable a new level of cinematic experiences across multiple browsers and operating systems.

“For over ten years Adobe has pushed the limits of creativity and redefined rich interactive Web experiences with Flash Player. Adobe has a long track record of creating technologies that influence market direction and we believe this beta release of Flash Player 10 raises the bar once again,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Working closely with the community, we are delivering groundbreaking creative features that will be transformative for interactive designers and developers, and revolutionary for end users.”

For the first time, Adobe is enabling the creation of custom filters and effects that extend and can be combined with native effects in Flash Player for unprecedented creative control of rich content to more fully engage end users. Custom filters and effects are created with the Adobe Pixel Bender toolkit, also available for no charge on Adobe Labs. Adobe Pixel Bender is the same technology behind many filters and special effects in Adobe After Effects CS3 software, the industry standard for creating motion graphics and visual effects for film and broadcast. Developers targeting Adobe Flash Player 10 beta can now create their own filters, blend modes, and fills with Adobe Pixel Bender by writing small pixel-shading functions that can be parameterized to create animated effects or change the effect on rich media content at runtime.

“One of the best things about the creative features now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is that they won't slow down performance,” said Grant Skinner, CEO and chief architect of gskinner.com. “With Flash Player 10 beta, developers can enable SWF content to render through the memory bandwidth and computational horsepower of the GPU hardware processor, freeing up the CPU to do more - such as render 3D content and intricate effects, and process complex business logic. No other browser runtime has these capabilities.”

Building on over 25 years of Adobe expertise with text, the highly flexible new text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta provides interactive designers and developers creative control over device font attributes, such as anti-alias, rotation, and style as well as support for ligatures. More text layout options, such as vertical, bi-directional and right-to-left, will support the creation of RIAs in more languages and can provide more interactive eBooks and online publications that rely on Adobe Flash Player technology. Additionally, new variable bitrate streaming for video between Adobe Flash Player 10 beta and intended future releases of Adobe Flash Media Server will automatically adjust video quality as bandwidth availability fluctuates to provide constant video playback without pausing to buffer, dramatically improving end user experiences. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta also introduces native support for 3D effects to easily position, rotate and animate 2D objects while retaining interactivity.

“The 3D effects and transformations now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta enable developers to get started quickly with 3D,” said Ralph Hauwert, owner of UnitZeroOne and a Core Developer of Papervision 3D. “For interactive designers and developers well-versed in creating 3D experiences, the revamped drawing API and Pixel Bender language will enable an entirely new depth of graphics unseen on the Web today. Interactive designers and developers will be able to create movie-like experiences, with special effects that before weren't possible on the Web.”

Adobe Flash Player delivers unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and virtually universal reach across operating systems. Adobe Flash Player content reaches more than 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops. Adoption of the previous update to Adobe Flash Player 9, which supports H.264-enabled HD content, set all-time records by achieving 62 percent market penetration in less than three months. More than 75 percent of broadcasters who stream video on the Web use Flash technology.

Innovations introduced in the beta release of Adobe Flash Player 10 will contribute to future work on the Open Screen Project, which is dedicated to delivering a consistent runtime environment across personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. More information about the Open Screen Project is available at www.openscreenproject.org.

Availability

The pre-release version of Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is available immediately as a free download from Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/astro. To find out more about Flash Player 10 beta and to see demonstrations of new effects and capabilities, visit www.adobe.com/go/flashplayer10_demos. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is offered for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. The Adobe Pixel Bender Exchange is now available for community members to create custom effects for Adobe Flash Player 10 beta at www.adobe.com/go/pixelbender.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

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