Can we use Flash Player 11 abilities through Flex SDK 4.5.1?

Question

As you know BitmapData has some limitation for image size and resolution in Flash Player 10 (maximum resolution is 8192) and for Flash Player version 11 and later, Adobe fixed this limitation and depends on OS we can have all type of huge resolutions in BitmapData. But my problem is now I'm using Flex SDK 4.5.1 which base Flash Player is 10.2.159.1.

So is there any possibility to use this benefit of Flash Player 11 with my current Flex SDK with implementing a restriction based on Flash version with something like Capabilities.version or not?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Yes. You have to :

• add the -swf-version=XX arguments to your compiler settings
• add the -target-player=11.X arguments to your compiler settings
• optionally, grap the corresponding playerglobal.swc and duplicate your FlexSDK, replacing the original SWC file (this is if you need to access new APIs)

Here is a comprehensive tutorial on how to this, and also a very useful chart to know what SWF version to use.

So is there any possibility to use this benefit of Flash Player 11 with my current Flex SDK with implementing a restriction based on Flash version with something like Capabilities.version or not?

Generally, I don't think the approach of targeting a earlier version and check the actual one at runtime will work because the Player, even if it's version 11.0, will try to act just like the 10.2 if this the version your SWF was compiled for. See the very beginning of this presentation for more details. Use SWFObject to set the minimum player version for your application.

However, since your need is support for larger images, which is somehow transparent to programmers, I am not sure it is actually disabled for older SWFs. That should be tested.