Datasheet

4
Understanding
Flash Player 10
T
he most important application in the Flash
Platform is Flash Player. With the release of Flash
CS4 Professional in late 2008, Adobe also released
Flash Player 10. At the time of this writing, Flash Player
10 was too new to be included in studies, but according
to a June 2008 study, Flash Player 9 was on 97.7 percent
of computers in the United States, Europe, and Asia,
whereas Flash Player 8 was on 98 percent of computers
in similar regions.
Downloading and Installing Flash Player
Even though the overwhelming majority of computer users
worldwide have Flash Player installed on their machines,
you may still encounter users who, for a variety of reasons,
do not have the player installed or have an older version
that will not support ActionScript 3.0. Fortunately, this
issue is generally very easy to handle. Your users can
manually visit Adobe’s Web site at www.adobe.com and
click the Get Adobe Flash Player button. Alternatively, you
can include code in your HTML document that will detect
the lack of the player or an outdated version and
automatically prompt the user to install the Flash Player. If
you create your HTML document using Adobe
Dreamweaver CS4, this functionality is included
automatically in the code that is added to the page when
you insert a Flash movie.
Flash Player Versions
At the time of this writing, Flash Player 10 is the most
current version. Released in late 2008 alongside Flash CS4
Professional, Player 10 was designed to use several new
features of Flash, including the ability to render 3D
graphics and effects. However, most users today still have
Flash Player 9 installed. Almost all the techniques used in
this book will work correctly for users on either version 9
or 10, but ActionScript 3.0 is not supported on earlier
versions at all. In the cases when Player 10 will be required
for your users, it will be pointed out, but if Player 10
enjoys the same adoption rate as past versions, it should
only take a year or so for it to become the dominant
version on the Internet. Flash Player is available in
Windows, Macintosh, and Linux versions.
You can view a detailed report on the current rate of
adoption of Flash Player on Adobe’s Web page at www.
adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/. The site
includes data based on the version, locations of users,
operating systems, and more.
Flash Player Debug Version
The “normal” version of Flash Player does not include the
ability to debug troublesome ActionScript code. However,
Adobe has developed a special Debug version of the Player
with this added capability. You can download the latest
version of the Debug Player at www.adobe.com/support/
flashplayer/downloads.html.
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