Adobe AIR 2.7: Built for Speed

I’m very excited about the release of Adobe AIR 2.7. Especially for mobile. It offers a similar set of new features as Flash Player 10.3 as well as some exciting new mobile enhancements:

Mobile

• Enhanced rendering for iOS – AIR apps for iOS render up to 4x faster in CPU mode. This change will improve the performance of many AIR for iOS apps, including those built with the Flex framework.
• Faster development time for iOS applications – Developers can now debug and build iOS applications faster than with previous versions using a new mode available within the AIR Developer Tool (ADT). During the development of an application, developers can now choose to use “interpreter mode” to streamline the testing and debugging development cycle.
• AIR installation on SD cards for Android devices – This feature allows end users to install or move the AIR runtime onto the SD cards within their Android devices so they can free up storage space on the phone.

What mobile operating systems does Adobe AIR 2.7 support? Currently Android 2.2+  and iOS 4+ are supported.  The BlackBerry Tablet OS is scheduled to receive an OTA (over the air) update by the end of June.

Desktop

• Acoustic echo cancellation – With integrated support for acoustic echo cancellation, developers can now add real-­‐time VoIP capabilities to games, enterprise, and other types of applications without requiring users to wear a noise-­‐canceling headset. Users can now chat using the microphone built into their desktop or laptop computer. This new capability is also available in Flash Player 10.3.
• Navigation Improvements for HTML Content – Enables seamless weblink-­‐style navigation within desktop apps such as magazine viewers and ebook readers.  Developers can now respond to a new event to be notified when content within the HTMLLoader control attempts to change the location of a page. This enhancement provides developers with a better way implement intra-­‐application navigation.
• Integrated support for Media Measurement – The Adobe AIR 2.7 runtime now includes the same built-­‐in support for media measurement as Adobe Flash Player 10.3, allowing companies to simplify the collection of real-­‐time, aggregated reporting data for how content is distributed and viewed by users. With direct support for Adobe SiteCatalyst®, powered by Omniture®, developers can implement video analytics for existing or legacy video players with as little as two lines of code.

Note that you can access the new APIs in AIR 2.7 by making manual changes to the existing SDK/tooling configuration. To learn more about the new APIs, read the online ActionScript 3 reference documentation. Just keep in mind that although Flash Builder 4.5.1 and Flex SDK 4.5.1 can support the AIR 2.7 SDK it does not officially support the AIR 2.7 APIs.  If you want to access the AIR 2.7 APIs you can manually change the development  setup by overlaying AIR 2.6 included with Flex SDK 4.5.1 with AIR 2.7.

(See the AIR team blog for more info)