journal

MAX keynote demoed “Astro” and “Hydra“, “Astro” is the codename for the next version of Flash Player 10. What they talked about was a new way to do text in the player. Previously, text wasn’t handled as well as it could have been in the Flash Player and that’s led to it feeling less “native” and I think it some cases less “webby”. It also didn’t support bidirectional text. They’re making the text rendering engine extensible. This means developers will be able to create their own rules for things like layout, and languages on top of the Flash Player. It also means we’ll be able to roll out text updates whenever we want which is going to mean text will be an important and vibrant part of the player.

Hydra is also pretty cool, Developers/Designers can now create their own filter effects. Because one of the goal of “Hydra” is interoperability between our design products and the player. So you can use the language to create custom filters, effects and blend modes and then use them in a lot of different places.  The possibility of using these filters across Adobe products is also a possibility although not confirmed.