Penguin.SWF

A new version of the Flash Player is available. To be specific, this is Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, version identifier 9,0,115,0. It is simultaneously available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. The Linux version, as with previous Linux versions, is presently x86_32 only.

This version includes the new Flash support for the standard H.264 and AAC codecs as well as hardware-accelerated fullscreen support (where supported by video hardware and drivers, and specified by a site's SWF). This is also the first official Linux release to support the new XEmbed browser protocol which simply allows a browser plugin on Unix to behave better in a modern desktop environment.

Improvement over the string of beta releases: This new XEmbed-enabled plugin should work with Opera now.

Get it here (.tar.gz, .rpm, and YUM available).

Posted by Mike Melanson at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (107)

Adobe's Flex Builder is coming to Linux. You can download the public alpha of the tool over on the appropriate labs page.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A release candidate for Flash Player 9 Update is available for download on labs. Windows, Mac, and Linux, all at the same time.

Oh please, click bug, please be be gone!

Go get it. If you find problems, remember that this blog's comment section is not the best place to report them. This is. Also, there are the forums.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (47)

The oft-reported click bug that showed up in the last 2 beta releases of the Linux Flash Player 9 Update finally manifested on a machine in our own lab. The problem turns out to be an artifact of the simple fact that no two Unix window managers operate the same way.

Anyway, the next release will have the fix. No, I don't have any date for the release.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)

There is a new beta of the Flash Player Update available. That's right: the beta is even available for Linux (same time as Windows and Mac). Download it here.

This beta is affectionately named Moviestar due to these key new features:

• H.264 video
• AAC audio
• Hardware-accelerated fullscreen video playback (new for Linux in this beta; Win/Mac had it in previous beta)

Yep-- fullscreen hardware acceleration during video playback using OpenGL/GLX on Linux, where available... and functional. If you find that it does not work right, you can disable hardware acceleration using the "Settings..." menu from the right-click context menu. Oh, and file a bug with hardware details, video card driver version, GLX version, that sort of stuff.

If you have any questions about the new audio/video stuff, check Tinic's thorough blog post on the matter.

I would also like to hear if anyone is still experiencing the click bug (where no events are triggered in response to mouse clicks).

Posted by Mike Melanson at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (84)