Flash Player 10.2 Beta Supports IE9’s Hardware Acceleration

Earlier this week, Adobe
announced a beta release of Flash Player 10.2 that includes Internet Explorer
9 hardware-accelerated rendering support
, previously previewed
in Flash Player “Square.” Adobe
writes, “we’ve seen significant improvements in Flash Player
graphics performance—exceeding 35% in Internet Explorer 9 Beta compared to
Flash Player running in previous versions of IE.” Other features of the new
Flash Player 10.2 beta that mirror those available in IE9 include hardware-accelerated
video
playback and sub-pixel text rendering enhancements.

We applaud Adobe’s work to harness the full power of the PC and their use
of the new hardware-acceleration-friendly
ISurfacePresenter interface of IE9. This new IE9 interface is intended specifically
to improve the performance of DirectX-based ActiveX controls.

If you’re one of the over 15 million users who have now downloaded
and installed
Internet Explorer 9 Beta and you’re in a beta kind of mood, you may
want to check out this beta
version of Flash
and see how it performs in your environment. Like all beta
software, the beta of Flash Player 10.2 is pre-release software and may have bugs
and other incompatibilities.

—Ted Johnson, Program Manager Lead for Web Graphics