Software Update: Adobe Flash Player & AIR 22.0.0.192

Adobe has released version 22 of Flash Player and the Integrated Runtime. With Adobe Flash Player it is possible to play Flash content, mainly swf files, on the computer. Popular video sites such as YouTube and Google Video, among others, offer their visitors the opportunity to play videos with the stand-alone Flash Player. Adobe AIR provides a cross-platform environment for developing and playing so-called Rich Internet Applications. The release notes for this release can be found below.

New Features

Video Pipeline Changes for Android AIR
To address recommendations from Google and to keep pace with OS future developments, we’ve made significant changes in the way we use video codecs for decoding on AIR Android. There is no impact on functionality or performance for an AS developer. However, if you encounter issues with your AIR Android application, please report them to us.

Prevent Flash Player Cross-Channel Installation on OSX
Beginning with Flash Player version 22, installing a beta version over a release version – and vice versa – will require first uninstalling the installed version before installing the cross channel version.
For example, if you have a current release version installed, you’ll first need to uninstall it using the beta uninstaller before installing the beta version. The beta version must also be uninstalled, using the beta uninstaller, prior to installing the current release version.
Note that this brings feature parity with Flash Player on Windows, which has had this feature since version 14.

EnableLocalAppData
Flash applications use Appdata/Roaming directory (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player) to store information like LSOs (Local Shared Objects) or logs etc. If this folder has been redirected to a network drive, which can occur at times in enterprise environments, performance and security issues may arise. With this feature, we are providing a new property for the mms.cfg, “EnableLocalAppData” which if set, will place the Macromedia Folder (where flash app data is stored) in AppData/Local directory (C:\Users\username\AppData \Local\Macromedia\Flash Player). With EnableLocalAppData, the user will be able to place their system’s AppData folder on a network location without worrying about impacting flash applications’ data or log performance. Users can set EnableLocalAppData by adding EnableLocalAppData=1, EnableLocalAppData=yes, or EnableLocalAppData=true value in mms.cfg.

HiDPI support for AIR Windows
From AIR 22 onwards, we have introduced HiDPI support for AIR Desktop on Windows, where we will be providing higher quality rendering for AIR contents on HiDPI displays. The feature will work on the concept of higher pixel density scaling instead of pixel-doubling scaling. The feature is already provided for AIR on Mac Retina displays.
To implement the above feature in your AIR application, set requestedDisplayResolution to “high” in your application’s descriptor file. high

stage.contentsScaleFactor
AIR content scales according to the value of stage.contentsScaleFactor. Where, the value of stage.contentsScaleFactor would be calculated as
stage.contentsScaleFactor = Current DPI / DPI at 100% (The DPI at 100% for Windows is 96 by default)
However, some of the content on Windows would scale only after the user signs-off and then signs-in again, as prompted by the OS. In the case where an extended screen is connected, the AIR app would adjust according to the DPI level of the particular screen, where each screen can have its independent DPI level. Hhigh quality renderings will cover the Stage3D content, vector assets and text, whereas high-resolution bitmap assets will have to be provided by the developer.
The Stage3D back buffer needs to be configured to the high resolution back buffer which can be done by calling Context3D.configureBackBuffer with the wantsBestResolution parameter set to ‘true’.
The number of Screen pixels for the content will be ActionScript side Flash Pixels * Contents Scale Factor * Contents Scale Factor

Anti-Aliasing (Render to texture) for AIR Mobile
Anti-Aliasing is useful in improving perceived image quality in applications. Hardware base Multisampling Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) is now available for both Mobile Platforms ie iOS and Android using Contex3D.setRenderToTexture API.
This feature was previously available for Desktop and Flash Player.
To enable MSAA set the level from 0 to 2 using the Context3D.setRenderToTexture.
The following are the effect of levels of antialiasing values:
0=1 subsample, No antialiasing
1=2 subsamples, medium antialiasing
2=4 subsamples, high antialiasing.
If you provide higher level of antialiasing (more than 2) the level will be clipped to either the maximum level of antialiasing supported by GPU or 2.
Note: This feature is currently not available in configureBackbuffer.
API Assumptions and Dependencies
1) Anti-Aliasing is not available in software mode rendering.
2) Extra GPU memory will be used by the App using Anti-aliasing and hence can cause slight performance degradation.

Echo Cancellation on AIR iOS
Starting with AIR 22, AIR developers will now have access to Echo Cancellation with AIR iOS applications. Acoustic echo occurs when speaker output feeds back to the built-in microphone input producing disturbing echoing artifacts and significantly reducing the quality of captured data. Typical acoustic echo arises with collaboration applications, where two or more parties carry out interactive conversation. With AIR 22 and onwards, developers will be able to create VOIP applications without any echo using AIR on iOS.
This feature is already present on AIR for desktop. To get access to the device Microphone, we typically use Microphone.getMicrophone(), but this API returns a simple microphone, which does not have the ability to eliminate acoustic echo. In order to remove acoustic echo, we need to get an instance of the Microphone using the API: Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone(). The device microphone returned by this API will have the acoustic echo cancellation feature enabled.
Please note that the application must be packaged with latest AIR SDK 22 or above and the swf-version should be 33 or above.

Limitations:
VOIP Applications will work only on RTMP.
Performance of this feature will be varying depending upon the iOS version and the device type.
The API MicrophoneEnhancedOptions will be a no-op on AIR for iOS.

Multitasking Enhancements Support in AIR iOS – Beta
With iOS 9, Apple introduced Multiasking enhancements for some iPad devices.
We’re happy to share that AIR 22 lets developers utilize these iOS enhancements (with the exception of Picure-In-Picture).

Support for Android N Beta
AIR Applications built using AIR 21 or below may not run properly on Google’s latest Android N preview build and can encounter following error (see below). We’ve fixed this issue with AIR 22 and developers are encouraged to upgrade to the AIR SDK 22 to comply with Android’s new restrictions.

Override Flash Player’s default language via mms.cfg
This feature allows users to change flash player’s default language by setting a property, named DefaultLanguage in mms.cfg. Flash player’s default language will be set to the language given in DefaultLanguage key in the mms.cfg regardless of the system’s language.
Note: “Y” indicates flash player’s language will be overridden with language given in DefaultLanguage property while for “N”, “en” will be assigned for the configured language.
This feature is applicable to both Flash Player (all plugin-types) and AIR.

Fixed Issues

Flash Player

• SecurityError.prototype in Dictionary throws an exception [4100136]
• Printing via FlexPrintJob, border of the “Print” button is missing [4136816]
• Player crashes if “totalFrames” property of a loaded volatile MovieClip is accessed [4127339]
• XML attributes randomly receiving null characters [4100928]
• PPAPI Printed rectangle gets shifted in position [4119300]
• [Chrome Only] Portrait mode prints objects smaller as compared to landscape mode [4122310]
• DisplayObject.setScrollRect is throwing error 1508 [4150980]
• space metacharacter [\s] doesn’t include non-breaking spaces [ ] [4138365]
• Error#1508 thrown on site and blank screen appears [4136470]

AIR

• [Win10][StageWebView]Some uppercase letters can’t be entered in a form input [4091451]
• [Win10] AIR quits unexpectedly when trying to instantiate camera on Surface 4 [4086185]
• Application throws error#2031 if SecureSocket tries to connect to non-TLS server socket [4049565]
• [iOS] App crashes when compiled with AIR 20 or higher [4151370]
• [iOS9] AIR crashed when use sound in background mode [4083774]
• [iOS] [Win SDK] Compilation fails while executing ld64 error on packaging IPA in Windows machine using -hideAneLibSymbols yes [4118588]
• [iOS][Android] StageText: FocusEvent.MOUSE_FOCUS_CHANGE event added that allows preventDefault[] to cancel focus loss [4057869]
• [iOS] UIBackgroundModes for “location” not working [4136086]
• [iOS] Push notification subscription crashes the app [4137024]
• [iOS] App crashes on calling CameraUI [4148590]
• [iOS] A particular application crashes when brought to foreground from background
• [iOS] The Bengali[ or Hindi] characters displayed as blank box when clicked outside of Textfield after typing Bengali[or Hindi] characters into Textfield. [3975752]
• [iOS][Win] IPA packaged on Windows machine cannot be submitted to the Apple App store. Error “This build is invalid” occurs in iTunes connect
• [iOS][Win] Installation Error: ApplicationVerificationFailed message appears on installing IPA using adt command if there is any info plist inside the assets or ANE
• [Android] FocusEvent.MouseFocusChange event should be added in StageText in Android – 3797220
• [Android]Memory problem on airSDK20 [4101613]
• [Android] FLV videos don’t work with StageVideo [3943664]
• [Android] Entering Unicode Emoticons crashes an App [4118744]
• ATF containing RGB888 format are not getting rendered properly [4154433]
• ANE compiled with AIR 22 is not working anymore [4146925]