Tonight marks the release of the AIR 2.0 beta to the Adobe Labs! This is truly a remarkable release that I’m sure will allow web developers to continue to build cutting-edge, multi-platform applications that we have come to expect from AIR.
So, what’s new? Well, you can check out some release notes here, or this Adobe TV session from MAX last month.
What am I excited about? Well, there is a whole lot packed into this release, but some of the things that I personally have been playing with are the new API’s that allow us to directly work with the audio we get from the Microphone (check out www.getmicrophone.com for more information about the back story). This new API allows you to get the raw ByteArray data right from the microphone and save it to disk, interpret it, or manipulate it. You can check out my ADC article here.
Another cool feature that AIR 2.0 is getting is IP Multicast support. Yes kids, you heard me right — AIR 2.0 will be able to do peer-to-peer audio and video streaming in a way that allows you to save bandwidth and create highly-scalable video applications. This is one of those things I have been waiting on for years.
Oh, and did I mention that AIR 2.0’s memory and CPU use footprint is 100x better than before? Well, that may be an exaggeration, but lets put it this way. An application that I used to run 24×7 on my server used to accumulate about 10MB an hour, filling up my RAM quickly and crashing out after about a day. The exact same app compiled with AIR 2.0 has been running for about 14 days now, and is still using nearly the same amount of memory as it did when it launched (about 20 MB). Simply amazing!
So, download and enjoy TODAY!
QueTwo's Blog 