Microsoft is already developing a media box that will enable users to watch movies, play games, and control household appliances from one unit. Flash will play a vital role in the delivery of broadband entertainment, news, and information. If Flash continues to develop on its current path, it will become the essential ingredient that helps the browser glue many different types of rich content together. Video, 3-D objects and other types of media can be displayed using rich interfaces created in Flash.

Video was, is and will be a huge new trend for the Flash Player. Maelstrom, the next-generation Flash Player, identified as Flash Player 9 on screen during a demo, offers improved rendering performance, allowing for effects such as blurring of a live video or applying “grayscale” adding gray tint to an image.

Adobe Flash Player is the high performance, lightweight, highly expressive client runtime that delivers powerful and consistent user experiences across major operating systems, browsers, mobile phones, and devices. Installed on over 700 million Internet connected desktops and mobile devices, Flash Player enable organization and individuals to build and deliver great digital experiences to their end users.

Abode is now featuring prerelease versions of the Flash Player 9 update software. This release will include bug fixes and support for additional operating systems, specifically Linux. Release versions of Flash Player 9 Updates for Windows and Macintosh platforms will be soon available. This software is being made available for developers and consumers to test their content to ensure existing Flash content plays back correctly and that there are no compatibility issues. The purpose of this beta release is to gather the users’ feedback so that Adobe can verify that:

• The new Flash Player is compatible with previously authored Flash content
• Developers have an opportunity to test their content and applications prior to the product release to help identify bugs on a variety of machines and configurations.

Ten years from now we believe that Flash will truly be ubiquitous, not just on the web but in many aspects of daily life. Chances are high that for any device and screen you interact with, you’ll be dealing with Flash. As Flash runs on more and more devices and platforms, including Linux, it won’t really matter any more to the end user what powers their favorite content because it will run essentially everywhere. As content creators, we have truly become cross-platform developers.

The potential for the Flash platform, following Macromedia’s merger with Adobe, is virtually limitless.

In the next years, the Flash platform will move beyond the browser to become a standard content and application delivery platform for occasionally connected, mobile, and desktop applications. The evolution of tools such as the Flash authoring environment and Flex, combined with the Adobe range of products such as Photoshop and After Effects, will provide developers with an even more elegant and integrated toolset and workflow for content and application authoring than we have today. With the growth of broadband penetration, we will see the Flash Player gain new features such as hardware-accelerated 3D support and advanced real-time video and sound manipulation—some of which we are already seeing in the latest versions.

As far as rich Internet applications and occasionally connected applications are concerned, we will see a mass exodus as Ajax developers embrace the cross-platform support, simpler workflow, and elegant toolset provided by Flex. Already there is much interest in the Flash platform from the traditional web application community and developers are starting to realize that Flash has moved on considerably from its humble roots 10 years ago as an animation package. Myths are being shattered daily as the Flash platform grows from strength to strength with massive improvements in the areas of accessibility, performance, and development workflow. An open-source solution called FlashAid helps make Ajax more accessible by using the accessibility features in Flash Player.

Open source will continue to play a very important role in bringing the brightest minds to the Flash platform, and we will see the growth and maturation of open-source tools and servers to complement the commercial offerings by Adobe and other vendors. These open-source products will also increase the adoption of Flash in the creation of communication and e-learning initiatives in third-world countries. Eventually, as the Flash platform reaches a certain level of maturity, we may even see open sourcing of Flash Player and Flash becoming a truly open standard.

First, what’s going to happen to Flash Player? Second, what’s going to happen to the Flash authoring environment?

As for Flash Player, WE think it has achieved so much momentum that in the next years it will be used on many non desktop devices—ones that don’t require a heavy-duty operating system, like cameras—or in control panels for home security systems or in-car navigation systems. Those systems might run Flash Player as a kind of miniature operating system that interfaces with the hardware.

In the desktop world—that is, the web-browser plug-in and future desktop player—the future seems less certain to me. It depends on how quickly Microsoft moves in on the territory. On the desktop, Flash succeeds because it gives users the “rich experience” (motion graphics, branded interface) that they don’t get from the operating system. Flash is basically a preview of what a lot of desktop computing experiences really should be like. Hence, WE imagine Windows, Mac OS, and Linux will eventually natively provide everything that Flash provides, but at the operating-system level.

The Flash authoring tool is the other side of the question. There are quite a few animation tools on the market, and there are many programming tools. But there aren’t very many development tools that let you combine those disciplines the way Flash does. With development tools being what they are today, including Flash, it takes a lot of work to make a beautifully handcrafted, unique, custom-designed interface, or a custom-designed game or marketing piece.

We think the future of Flash depends on its ability as an authoring tool to improve on that enterprise of creating the rich experience. Animation on its own is not unique, and programming is not unique, but WE think where those two cross paths is incredibly important territory. Authoring tools like Flash are just starting to address that union. Flash has inspired such creativity and exploration because it brought those two worlds together.

We see Flash continuing to expand into device markets and being on literally every device that requires a user interface. We see native desktop applications being replaced by web-enabled versions that work as well on your desktop as they do on your mobile phone.

We see Flash displays hanging in art galleries, depicting the latest creative explorations, right alongside oil painting and sculptures.

Where will Flash be 10 years? Everywhere?

Seriously, Flash is spreading from the Internet onto the desktop (Apollo) and into phones, embedded systems, and appliances. There’s just so much opportunity for this technology. The same consumer force that is driving build-to-order running shoes and designer vacuum cleaners is driving the market for rich, personalized software experiences—and Flash is the best technology to deliver them.

Most important of all, we will see Flash on 64-bit Linux. Maybe by then, it’ll even be 128-bit Linux.

Now with Adobe’s strategies of redefining software and technologies, and setting new standards for delivering content, we can see Flash reaching a new peak with every version release.

We would expect Flash in the coming years to have a dynamic image saving function. We had always wanted to make a Flash card application where a user could drag and drop predefined objects, write text, and then save the card as an image on a location on their desktop.

We would also want to see Flash have vector 3D creation and animation tools. This would save us a lot of time and money purchasing third-party tools.

Finally, we would love to see a feature that makes it possible to convert vector graphics to bitmaps within the Flash authoring environment. This is, of course, bypassing the export and import route.

We think there will be Flash operating systems or Flash embedded systems, which make developing cross-platform applications and content very easy. This includes very powerful APIs and low-level operations for every purpose, such as 3D, sound manipulation, and so on.

Flash will be built into every mobile phone, so you’ll be able to do everything from remotely controlling the temperature of your refrigerator to playing multiplayer games with your friends, to having a nice video chat with your mom.

More and more people are connecting to the Internet using mobile phones. We forecast that in the near future mobile gadgets will become the main access point to the Internet rather than personal computers. When that happens, Flash will become an important tool for making mobile device interfaces more interactive and easier to navigate.

With the speed at which the technology is progressing now, this could all feasibly become a reality in less than five years.

Flash has the potential to become the universal runtime and make differences among operating systems and platforms irrelevant. In the next 10 years, Flash will fully realize this dream. One thing will not change, though: we’ll still be out there working to create better experiences using Flash.