Macromedia unveils Flash Player 8.5

Macromedia today unveiled Flash Player 8.5, its high-performance runtime client for rich internet applications that builds on version 8 by improving script execution on the virtual machine. A new, highly-optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine dubbed AVM2 is incorporated into version 8.5, working with the next generation of ActionScript 3.0. The new virtual machine is faster, supports full runtime error reporting, and debugging. Flash Player 8.5 also includes Binary socket support, extending the software to work with any Binary protocol. The latest version also contains AVM1, which executes ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 code for backward-compatibility with existing and older content. An alpha version of Flash Player 8.5, as well as others tools for non-Mac users, is expected to be available for download on October 17th in conjunction with the MAX 2005 developer conference.

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