Adobe has released a public beta of it’s next iteration of Flash Player, version 11.3.300.214, which features improvements to the desktop player, as well as enhancements to AIR Mobile for developers. In the release notes, Adobe mentions that it has “relaxed” the driver gating hardware acceleration to 2006, which may mean that older cards and Intel graphic chipsets such as the GMA 950 will gain hardware acceleration in the final release.
The beta features a new auto-updater for Mac, which should increase convenience with users by not having to manually keep on top of new (stable) releases. Texture streaming has been added, mouse control has been tweaked, and the beta offers improved support for the Mac App Store.
For developers, AIR Mobile gains some aspect ration enhancements, and simulator support for iOS. ADT support has been added for the 144×144 icons added in AIR 3.3, and screen DPI support has been adjusted to accommodate the new, high-resolution iPad. The beta requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher. It works with Safari 5.x, Firefox 4.x and higher, all versions of Google Chrome and Opera 11 or later.