Flash roadmap reveals new features, improved GPU support, lack of retirement plans
Flash for mobile may just be a spectator at its own wake at this point, but the desktop browser plug-in is still alive and (reasonably) well. In fact, Adobe has a host of plans for its flagship multimedia platform, as outlined in its 2012 roadmap. It all starts with 11.2, which should be landing sooner, rather than later, with support for right and left mouse clicks, multithreaded video decoding and improved GPU acceleration support. That will be followed by Cyril and Dolores, which will also expand the list of hardware-accelerated video cards, as well as improve overall performance and add a few welcome tweaks, like supporting keyboard input in full screen mode. Finally, in 2013, we'll see the debut of Flash Next -- a completely overhauled platform with major updates to the runtime core and ActionScript language that are designed to "meet the needs of developers over the next five to 10 years." Check out the source for full details but, be warned -- it's PDF only.
