Flash Player 10 public beta is now publicly available for download. This next generation player has added some outstanding new features. Many of these new features were first demonstrated at MAX 2007 in Chicago last year. If you didn't see these demos, here is a quick recap of these new features.

3D effects are a new API available to allow you to easily transform 2D objects into a 3D space. These objects also remain fully interactive. These new 3D objects can be easily nested and support full inheritance. This new set of effects is certainly not a replacement for tools like AWAY3D or PaperVision3D but will allow simple 3D animations for the more novice developers.

There is a brand new text engine within Flash Player 10 that adds support for right to left and vertical layouts. Right to left text support allows for the usage of bidirectional languages and complex scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai. The new text engine also allows you to create inline tables, inline images and even multi column displays.

3 column layout

One of the coolest new features is the ability to create custom filters and effects through the use of the new Adobe Pixel Bender language (previously known as hydra). With Adobe Pixel Bender, you can create many effects that were previously only possible within tools like After Effects. These new effects can be scripted and animated at runtime. Custom effects can even be parameterized to animate and change the effect at runtime. There is minimal impact on application size as complex filters including shading effects are generally under 1KB.

The drawing API has been updated to make it much easier to draw shapes and even works within the new 3D space. The new enhancements extend the current drawing API.

For the AS3 developers out there, you will be happy to know that Flash Player 10 supports the new Vector data type for typed arrays.

There have also been many upgrades to the performance of the Flash Player. Through the use of hardware acceleration applications will run smoother and will take some of the work off of the processor.

So how do you get the new Flash Player 10 beta?

Simply visit the Flash Player download site at:
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

How do I see these cool new features in action?

Just visit the Flash Player demo site at:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/index.html

So go check out these new demos and let me know what you think of Flash Player 10.