“Astro” is here!

"Astro" aka Flash Player 10 is here! I downloaded it off Labs (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html) yesterday night. I was excited to see the Demos posted on: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/ in new light! What excited me a lot was the new text rendering engine. A couple of things that I liked and saw a lot of possibilities were - the 3D engine, new streaming abilities for video and audio that adjusts video quality according to bandwidth available, improved hardware acceleration (haven't experimented with this feature..still!). Yeah, you will find the feature list on almost all the sites that talk about "Astro".

It was during the heydays of Flash 4.0, I was talking to a friend (another one in the computer-man's chest!) and the whole concept of having interactive stuff on your site was beyond imagination. Those were the days of the dial-up, when download speeds were in the "." (Decimals). I was talking to the same friend yesterday. He still hasn't picked up Flash as a development tool (more of a .NET guy!), but, he knew what I was talking about. I was actually surprised to see that his laptop already had "Astro" on it! Talk about fame and penetration rates. On the other hand, a lot of people I interact with on a more daily basis don't know what the technology is all about and how it works. They are still getting used to the transformation and spew slang when they see the infamous "loading…" screen. Of course, you don't need to expect them to know about the technology if they aren't related to it in anyway.

Now, in my field – Advertising, we have come to Flash Player 7 as the max requirement. So, when "Astro" releases, I am hoping that it reaches Flash 8 at least. I am sure "Astro" will be handier to us in promoting products and giving the user more by telling him and by being able to show him more of products. That's where the 3D engine becomes exciting. Creatives can be more dynamic and that calls for a whole new level of user experience – engrossing! The streaming capabilities of the new player also reduce a lot of burden when it comes to production of video –based promotion material. The way Flash player has been handling text has always been a concern. This has improved and been added on in "Astro".

My most wanted feature is the File API. This allows you to popup a file dialog and load the selected file at runtime. Does this mean that you can save file to disk? Well..