FlashPlayer 11.4 and AIR 3.4 available

Although initially highlighted because it included a number of security fixes, Tuesday's Flash Player updates from Adobe also included the release of FlashPlayer 11.4 and Air 3.4. Among the features in the new release of FlashPlayer are support for ActionScript workers, allowing processing to be carried out in the background without freezing the user interface, and support for bridges between sandboxes, allowing ActionScript objects to communicate across domains. Flash Player 11.4 also introduces licensing support in the form of Flash Player Premium for Gaming.

Flash Player 11.4 now uses the date of video cards drivers to work out how to use video acceleration in Stage3D. Previously, drivers before 2008 would not use hardware acceleration, but that date has been moved to 2006 for some modes. There is also a "constrained" profile, which allows for hardware acceleration on previously blacklisted Intel GMA chipsets. StageVideo can now also make use of the GPU to speed video stream processing from webcams.

The updates also include a number of fixes. The full details of the changes in Flash Player 11.4 and AIR 3.4 are available in the release notes. Downloads for Windows and Mac OS X are available for FlashPlayer 11.4 and AIR 3.4.

(djwm)