8/10/2016 - Beta - AIR 23.0.0.230

Report · Aug 10, 2016

Welcome to the latest AIR Runtime and SDK version 23 beta! We've been hard at work adding new features to AIR and we're looking forward to receiving feedback from our development community.

This beta release includes new features as well as enhancements and bug fixes related to security, stability, performance, and device compatibility for AIR Runtime and SDK 23. For full details, please see our release notes

New and Updated Features

Asynchronous Texture Upload for Mobile

Till AIR 22, texture upload was synchronous and developers had to wait till a new texture was uploaded successfully

With AIR 23, you can upload textures asynchronously while current texture is being rendered. This will ensure better UI performance for AIR applications and a smoother user experience.

On successful completion of asynchronous texture upload a TEXTURE_READY event will be generated. Asynchronous upload of texture data for all texture formats for all mip levels is done through two new APIs:

uploadFromBitmapDataAsync( source:BitmapData, miplevel:uint = 0)
uploadFromByteArrayAsync( data:ByteArray, byteArrayOffset:uint, miplevel:uint = 0 )

Echo Cancellation on AIR for Android

Starting AIR 23, we have introduced Echo Cancellation for AIR on Android.Acoustic echo occurs when the speaker output feeds back to the built-in microphone input, producing disturbing echoing artifacts and significantly reducing the quality of captured data.

Acoustic echo arises in collaboration applications, where two or more parties carry out interactive conversation. From this release onwards, developers can develop VOIP applications without any echo using AIR on Android.

Note: This feature is already present on AIR for desktop and iOS Platform. For more information, see Microphone - AS3.

Following changes are required in the action script code:

Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone

To get access to device Microphone, we use Microphone.getMicrophone(). However, this API returns a simple microphone, which does not have the ability to eliminate acoustic echo. To remove the acoustic echo, developers must get an instance of Microphone using the API: Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone(). The device microphone returned by this API has the acoustic echo cancellation feature enabled.

Requirements

Add the following tag under Android manifest additions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS" />

There may be pre-existing swfs that use Microphone. getEnhacedMicrohone () API (as it is already present and working for AIR desktop applications). If such swf files are packaged with the latest AIRSDK (version 23), the feature will not work. Developers need to recompile the swf with swf-version 34 or higher.

Sample snippet

Here is the example code snippet for this scenario:

public function Microphoe()

{

mic = Microphone.getEnhancedMicrophone();

mic.gain=60;

mic.rate =22;

mic.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, mic_status);

}

Limitations

Acoustic Echo Cancellation may not work on some devices (such as the Moto G2) because of hardware side limitations.
The API MicrophoneEnhancedOptions (present on AIR for desktop) will be a no-op on AIR for Android.
Performance of the feature can vary depending upon the hardware side handling of echo cancellation for different Android devices. For the devices that do not support Echo Cancellation at the hardware level, AIR will handle the echo cancellation from the software side.
Acoustic effects of the microphone class will vary according to the device. Because the Android Family has devices with different hardware configurations, the same audio settings will have different impact on different devices. For example, a developer may have to use "mic.gain = 70;" for Samsung Note 4 for loud output of the voice.

The StageText clear button is now optional on iOS

While creating StageText object on iOS, a clear button option is available by default to the AS developers. Beginning with AIR 23, a new feature has been introduced, which makes the StageText clear button optional. This provides more flexibility to the AS developers when using StageText. In the earlier versions, StageText object was created with an integrated clear button.

To implement this feature, following changes are required in the ActionScript code:

stageText.clearButtonMode

For getting access to the optional clear button support, AS developers can now use a clearButtonMode property to set different modes.

There are four modes associated with this property:

To show clearButton while editing: StageTextClearButtonMode.WHILE_EDITING
To never show clearButton: StageTextClearButtonMode.NEVER
To always show clearButton: StageTextClearButtonMode.ALWAYS
To show clearButton unless editing: StageTextClearButtonMode.UNLESS_EDITING

By default, clearButtonMode property is set as StageTextClearButtonMode.WHILE_EDITING.

Requirements

The application must be packaged with latest AIR SDK (version 23).
SWF version must be 34 or later.

Sample snippet

You can use this example code snippet for your reference.

public function ClearButtonMode()

{

label = new StageText();

label.clearButtonMode = StageTextClearButtonMode.NEVER;

label.textAlign = "right";

label.stage = stage;

label.viewPort = new Rectangle(20, 20, 90, 90);

}

Limitations for using stageText.clearButtonMode property

This property is not available in StageText with multi-line
This property is a No-Op for Android

Win: Add HiDPI support for AIR desktop (Release)

Beginning with AIR 23, HiDPI support for AIR Desktop on Windows has been introduced. It allows you to provide a higher quality rendering for AIR content on HiDPI displays. This feature works on the concept of higher pixel density scaling instead of pixel-doubling scaling.

Note: HiDPI is already available for AIR on Mac Retina displays.

To implement this feature in an AIR app, the developer should set requestedDisplayResolution as high in the manifest file.

requestedDisplayResolution set high
<requestedDisplayResolution>high</requestedDisplayResolution>

Known Issues

[Asynchronous Texture Upload]Time lag is observed when a new texture is uploaded asynchronously while the main thread is rendering the texture.
[Windows] ADL becomes unresponsive when manipulating frame tree of a new frame, before it has been installed in a frame tree (4175625)
[Android] softKeyboardRect height is incorrect (4085072)
[iOS 10] Apps are not visible on devices once installed using adt -installApp command
[iOS] VideoTexture on iOS - sometimes the event TEXTURE_READY isn't dispatched (4150401)
[iOS] Capabilities.screenDPI gives a wrong value on AIR 22 simulator (4157457)
[iOS] Context3D.drawToBitmapData uses wrong offset on mobile (4147414)
[iOS] Crash when trying to access function arguments (4117964)
[iOS] Landscape mode is not able to initiate the camera and the app crashes in debug mode (4168916)
[iOS] TextField with TextFieldType.INPUT cuts off text on the left side when focused (4009346)

Fixed Issues

ATF Textures (with JPEG Compression) are not rendered properly on MALI GPU.(3961778)
[Windows]TextField contextMenu displaying with offset with HiDPI (a.k.a. Retina) screens.(4176561)
For HiDPI machines, setting the NativeWindow bound property to a negative value on main monitor results in an increase of NativeWindow bound on the secondary monitor when the main monitor has a greater DPI than the secondary monitor(4176046)
The "Tab" and "Shift+Tab" keyboard shortcuts do not work on Text Field(4174808)
[iOS] Capabilities.screenDPI gives a wrong value on AIR 22 simulator (4157457)
[iOS] TextField with TextFieldType.INPUT cuts off text on the left when focused (4009346)
[Android] Full screen display states must use immersive mode on Android 4.4+ (4100625)
[Android] OpenSSL library upgraded to 1.0.2h version
[iOS] App using concurrency closes when a class is instantiated on the worker .swf (4067035)
[iOS] CameraRoll on iOS returns Bitmap in incorrect orientation (4070057)
[iOS] sharedobjects fail when available storage is low (3711301)
[iOS] [Windows] Error, ld: in section __TEXT,__text reloc 153: R_ABS reloc but no absolute symbol at target address for architecture arm64 while packaging Application with Social.ane using flag -hideAneLibSymbols yes (4005515)

Authoring for Flash Player 23 and AIR 23

Update application descriptor namespace to 23
SWF version should be 34

System Requirements

For system requirements of the current release of AIR in production, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/

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