Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Flash Player 9 (formerly Flash Player 8.5),
the next-generation Flash Player client runtime.
Flash Player 9 achieves up to 10 times faster performance through ActionScript 3.0 and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM), which features a Just In Time (JIT)
compiler that translates ActionScript bytecode to native machine code for maximum execution speed.
Flash Player 9 provides new application runtime capabilities for Adobe
Flex 2, also announced today. The Flex 2
product line provides developers with an integrated set of
tools and technology for fast, end-to-end development of web applications.
Developers can now deliver powerful and dynamic multimedia content and
applications via ActionScript 3.0 and a new highly optimized
ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM). ActionScript 3.0 is a powerful,
object-oriented ECMAScript-compliant programming language that provides
a familiar syntax and compelling new language features such as
ECMAScript for XML (E4X), regular expressions, and a standardized DOM
event model. Adobe is an active participant in the Ecma International
Programming Language technical committee (TC39-TG1) developing the
ECMAScript Edition 4 (ES4) standard. ECMAScript is a foundational
standard used by languages such as Adobe ActionScript, Netscape
JavaScript and Microsoft JScript.
The AVM was built from the ground up to offer performance, including more efficient memory utilization, faster
application start-times, improved debugging and full runtime error
reporting.
Instant adoption of Flash Player 9 will continue to be facilitated via
Flash Player Express Install and auto-update notification for current
Fla
sh Player users.
Adobe Flash Player 9 is available immediately as a free download at
www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer. Flash Player 9 is available in
both English and localized versions and is offered for both Windows and
Macintosh operating systems.