The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development

It’s been over a decade since FutureSplash, the predecessor to Macromedia Flash, and then later Adobe Flash, was first released; who could have imagined back then that a simple vector-based animation tool would evolve to become a robust platform for delivering expr- sive content, rich Internet applications, and high-quality video across a multitude of browsers and operating systems. Today, Flash encompasses more than just a browser plug-in and corresponding authoring tool; the Flash platform provides web, desktop, and mobile runtimes, together with fra- works, tools, servers, and services to enable designers and developers to create high-impact experiences. Flash Player remains at the core of the platform, with each release offering new capabilities and further improving performance. Building upon the addition of a new high-performance virtual machine for executing ActionScript code in Flash Player 9, the release of Flash Player 10 adds support for 3D transformations, custom filters and effects, advanced audio proce- ing, and GPU hardware acceleration, enabling an entirely new class of experiences not pre- ously achievable on the Web.