So with the dropping of the codename from Adobe… and Max right right around the corner, it only seems right that I try and put out my guesses/wishlist for Flash Player 10. So hear we go. Keep in mind, I am not an insider, an Adobe employee or anything more than just a guy who uses their tools to make an honest living.

1. A real HTML parser/renderer - please enough with the inferior handling of semantic elements like “strong” and “em”. Also, can we get a little superscript? Likelihood 5/10
2. Hardware acceleration where possible - Maybe limited to certain chispsets, but more than likely, video and vector rendering will be hardware accelerated. Say hello my little particle effects! Likelihood 9/10
3. Deprecation of AS2 - Dunno if this will happen for a while, but I am sure that someday the older VM in the FLash player will have to go bye bye… as a teacher, I am torn between teaching my students AS2 and AS3. It’s only going to become more so. Likelihood 3/10
4. New File Formats - With the addition of H.264 and AAC, why not add WAV? AIF? WMV? PSD? Let’s go crazy! Likelihood 3/10
5. Printing enhancements galore - It would only make sense that the printing support would be enhanced via some PDF technology. Why not be able to save screens or clips or display object, etc out from the Flash Player as PDF files directly? Likelihood 7/10
6. Computer Vision / Blob Recognition - Like the webcam libraries for Director, Processin, etc. Why not add some sort of capabilities to the player to enable facial recognition, optical character recognition, etc. Likelihood 1/10
7. Ability to connect directly to MySQL, MSSQL, etc. - So tired of middleware! And with some of the new data services in the Flex Framework, it makes sense to expand on this even more. Certainly, security is a concern of mine with this but with a proper sandbox, this might just be doable.
8. 5.1 Sound support - Woot! Likelihood 7/10
9. Video Conferencing / Multi user video enhancements - With the webcam tech in Flash now 3+ gens old, seems ready for a big upgrade in this area. Likelihood 5/10
10. Fractal Image handling / Caching - I want to be able to load a 6000+ pixel JPG and scroll it all over ala Zoomify, etc… right now, I need a tool like zoomify, why not be able to load a big fat image smoothly and quickly and without stuttering and choking during movement. Likelihood 3/10
11. Simultaneous release for devices - iPhone, Wii, Linux, Windows, Mac and an  open developer SDK for deploying licensed or custom players on other devices/platforms. Flash everywhere! Likelihood 3/10
12. Ability to load silver light content  - Likelihood 1/10
13. Online/Offline caching, etc. - Sound inline with MozilaFirefox 3 and the AIR model.

I suppose that’s all for now… what do you think? I see a wish starting over at Mike Huntington’s blog. I’d like to hear how crazy or off base I am. I always like a good reality check.

Posted on September 12, 2007

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