Adobe announced its major update to the Flash technology. The company released Flash Player 10, which is available for download for all popular browsers and platforms. This release of Flash Player provides a new consumption platform for content created by the new and enhanced Adobe Creativity Suite CS4. Notable features include:

• 3D Effects, GPU accelerated graphics that utilize the power of GPU to render animations
• Custom Filters and Effects
• Advanced Text Support
• Dynamic Sound Generation

Flash Player 10 is available for download here. Press release follows:

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Player 10 software. Interactive designers and developers can leverage the new expressive features and visual performance improvements in Flash Player 10 for unprecedented creative control to deliver the most compelling Web applications, interactive content and high quality video to users across multiple browsers and all major operating systems.

"Designers and developers know if they deliver video, online games, rich Internet applications (RIAs) and other interactive experiences using Adobe Flash Player, they can reliably reach the entire Web," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. "Flash Player 10 continues to set the pace for Internet innovation, and we're excited to see how the community is already using it to create an entirely new class of experiences not previously achievable on the Web."

Adobe Flash Player 10 builds on the capabilities of the world's most pervasive application runtime with new support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, advanced audio processing, and GPU hardware acceleration. Building on over 25 years of Adobe expertise with text, the highly flexible new text engine in Flash Player 10 provides interactive designers and developers with more text layout options and better creative control.

Adobe Flash Player 10 also extends the expressive capabilities of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product line with new levels of Adobe Flash technology integration to streamline collaboration and enhance the design/develop workflow. Interactive designers and developers can create custom filters and effects with Adobe Pixel Bender, which is the same technology behind many filters and special effects in Adobe After Effects CS4 software. Developers targeting Adobe Flash Player 10 can use these filters, blend modes and fills to animate effects or change the effect on rich media content at runtime. Flash Player 10 also enables new capabilities and performance improvements in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, the industry's most advanced authoring environment
for creating interactive experiences. This includes easy-to-use 3D effects that enable designers to design in 2D and easily transform and animate in 3D.

"Our clients expect innovation," said Tim Barber, partner and creative director for Odopod, a leading design studio and member of the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA). "With the improved visual performance and awesome new 3D effects in Adobe Flash Player 10, we can now use Adobe Flash CS4 Professional to create cool Web experiences that were previously impossible. For us, this means fewer boundaries to the creative process."
Adobe Flash Player delivers unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and virtually universal reach across operating systems. Flash Player content reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops. More than 80 percent of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, making it the number one format for video on the Web. Adoption of a previous update to Flash Player 9 set all-time records by achieving nearly 90 percent reach on Internet-enabled desktops in less than nine months and Flash Player 10 is expected to achieve a similar adoption rate.

Innovations introduced in Adobe Flash Player 10 will contribute to future Open Screen Project efforts, such as work that will bring Flash Player 10 to mobile devices. The Open Screen Project is an industry-wide initiative to deliver rich multi-screen experiences built on a consistent runtime environment for open Web browsing and standalone applications across personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. More information about the Open Screen Project is available here.

To learn more about the new features and read what designers and developers are saying about Adobe Flash Player 10, visit this page.