[MBHockey]

I just came across a nonchalant post about how the latest beta for Adobe's Flash product was supposed to add performance upgrades for the Mac. I know, i know. We've all heard this before and every time, Flash is disgustingly dog-slow...but not this time!

Now, running Safari 3 Beta and the Flash Beta might not be the best idea in the world. But it's been working well for me so far!

Anyway, the beta is version 9.0.60, and the latest official release is version 9.0.47

Get it here:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html

The most notable thing (besides the obvious speed increase on any flash site) is that Flash animations (ie, YouTube videos) do not slow down their framerate when Safari is not the active application

My sincerest apologies if this is already common knowledge (I couldn't find any posts relating to it).

[chucker]

Perhaps this was the update Apple was waiting for wrt/ the iPhone.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by MBHockey The most notable thing (besides the obvious speed increase on any flash site) is that Flash animations (ie, YouTube videos) do not slow down their framerate when Safari is not the active application

Are you sure that's the new Flash plugin and not the new Safari?

Originally Posted by Dave Hyatt Plugins are another area where work can occur while a Safari window is in the background. The Mac plugin framework is really archaic (in Safari and Firefox). Many plugins do animation and work based off being pumped “null events” in which they do processing. The faster you pump these events, the faster animations will occur, and the more CPU will be used. Safari 2 actually throttles these events aggressively to background windows and background tabs. However what we found when we did this was that users complained about the “slow plugin” problem of background windows. They wanted to be able watch videos or listen to audio through browser plugins and have another app active. In other words users *wanted* the browser to be working actively for them even while in the background. We have actually changed our behavior in the latest WebKit to only throttle backround tabs. Background windows are no longer throttled so that plugins can animate properly at normal speed. We expect that some users still won’t be happy with this change in the one case of wanting to listen to audio in a background tab, but we had to draw the line somewhere.

[MBHockey]

Originally Posted by Brad Are you sure that's the new Flash plugin and not the new Safari?

I was just assuming (since I tried a bunch of Flash sites after the update).

But it's good to know that it's actually Safari 3. Thanks Brad

I still stand behind my claim that the Flash beta is worlds faster than the current official release, however!

[Jerman]

Bumma, still isn't fast enough to let me play flash videos on my Pismo. Thanks for the heads up though!

[chris e boy]

Wow. I can actually watch youtube videos comfortably on my Powerbook 1.67 now. All other flash videos have been fine but youtube videos always seem t crank the CPU usage right up, its not quite so bad after this update.

[Axl]

The newest version of Flash still runs my iMac's 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo to 100% usage.

I can't watch YouTube videos for more than 5 minutes without having the fan screaming in my face. GAH!

[cosus]

Does it work on an iPhone?

[torifile]

[cosus]

Originally Posted by torifile

I still play Magic the Gathering.