Information Gift

Flash Player 7 Public Beta Released

Right on the heels of Macromedia's latest stats showing Flash MX Player penetration at @86%, comes the announcement of the public beta of Flash Player 7.

There are the official new features; namely an auto-update mechanism (initially for ActiveX clients-only), enhanced video quality/performance, and finally boosts to Actionscript execution in some areas. Then there are the possible new features being discussed by developers who have already begun taking apart the player to look for as-yet unannounced functionality.

Before we go further, let me put on my John Dowdell hat and implore everyone to download and test the new beta on your existing Flash or Flash projects in development, especially those projects that employ back-end/database communication. Remember, once Flash Player 7 is officially released, there's no taking it back, and if your project now breaks with the beta, this is your opportunity to avoid having to explain to your client why your work fails with the latest and greatest. Report your bugs!

First-up: Video quality
Ming Chan posted screengrab comparisons of Flash video in both the 7 beta and the Flash 6 ActiveX players to the FlashCoders list. It's not clear whether Ming's video was also compressed with a beta version of the Flash 7 authoring tool (note the logo bug on the F7 beta examples is missing in the F6 version), but there's a clear improvement in the images with reduced compression artifacting in the background.

New ActionScript?
In another FlashCoders posting, Kamyar Nazeri posted the following list of intriguing items:

System.setClipboard

System.security.allowInsecureDomain

System.Capabilities.windowlessDisable
System.Capabilities.localFileReadDisable
System.Capabilities.avHardwareDisable
System.Capabilities.playerType
System.Capabilities.hasScreenPlayback
System.Capabilities.hasScreenBroadcast

MovieClip.prototype.getNextHighestDepth
MovieClip.prototype.getInstanceAtDepth
MovieClip.prototype.getSWFVersion
MovieClip.prototype.getTextSnapshot

TextField.prototype.condenseWhite
TextField.prototype.mouseWheelEnabled

Array.CASEINSENSITIVE
Array.DESCENDING
Array.UNIQUESORT
Array.RETURNINDEXEDARRAY
Array.NUMERIC

Camera.prototype.setCursor

XML.prototype.getNamespaceForPrefix
XML.prototype.getPrefixForNamespace
XML.prototype.namespaceURI
XML.prototype.localName
XML.prototype.prefix

AsSetupError.prototype

Error.prototype.name
Error.prototype.message
Error.prototype.toString

EvalError.prototype.name
EvalError.prototype.message
EvalError.prototype.toString

ReferenceError.prototype.name
ReferenceError.prototype.message
ReferenceError.prototype.toString

SyntaxError.prototype.name
SyntaxError.prototype.message
SyntaxError.prototype.toString

TypeError.prototype.name
TypeError.prototype.message
TypeError.prototype.toString

URIError.prototype.name
URIError.prototype.message
URIError.prototype.toString

MovieClipLoader.prototype.loadClip
MovieClipLoader.prototype.getProgress
MovieClipLoader.prototype.unloadClip
MovieClipLoader.prototype.broadcastMessage
MovieClipLoader.prototype.addListener
MovieClipLoader.prototype.removeListener
MovieClipLoader.prototype._listeners

PrintJob.prototype.start
PrintJob.prototype.addPage
PrintJob.prototype.send

TextSnapshot.prototype.getCount
TextSnapshot.prototype.setSelected
TextSnapshot.prototype.getSelected
TextSnapshot.prototype.getText
TextSnapshot.prototype.getSelectedText
TextSnapshot.prototype.hitTestTextNearPos
TextSnapshot.prototype.findText
TextSnapshot.prototype.setSelectColor

ContextMenuItem.prototype.copy

ContextMenu.prototype.copy
ContextMenu.prototype.hideBuiltInItems

Here's another Flash 7 Player Beta Dump from Ketan Anjaria with a little more detail.

Rumor mongering
File under Fun to think about, but hold on to your money for now:

HTML textfields now support stylesheets?
HTML textfields now support embedded images?