Gnash beta release, 0.8.2

[Rob Savoye]

The first beta release of Gnash has just been made at version
0.8.2. Gnash is a GPL'd SWF movie player and browser plugin for
Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror. Gnash supports many SWF v7
features and ActionScript 2 classes. with growing support for SWF v8
and v9. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux distributions, embedded
GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86 processors, and 64 bit
architectures. Ports to Darwin and Windows are in progress for a
future release. The plugin works best with Firefox 1.0.4 or newer, and
should work in any Mozilla based browser. There is also a standalone
player for GNOME or KDE based desktops.

Improvements since the 0.8.1 alpha release are:

 * Improved timeline redesign.
 * Action execution order fixes.
 * Keyboard handling improved [1].
 * New classes implemented: System.capabilities (partial), SharedObject,
LocalConnection.
 * New opcodes implemented: ActionImplements, Try/Throw.
 * Movieclip.beginGradientFill completes drawing API support.
 * MovieClip._lockroot support added.
 * Implement GET/POST for MovieClip.loadVariables and MovieClip.loadMovie
 * Textfield support improved.
 * Security: configurable sandbox restricts filesystem access by movies.
 * Better support for SWF8.
 * Streaming OGG-contained multimedia (e.g. vorbis/theora or
vorbis/dirac), and other free formats.
 * OGL and Cairo renderers much improved.
 * Improvements of the Framebuffer GUI (hide text messages, support
   Linux events system, built-in touchscreen calibration, simple
   keyboard support, better architecture support).
 * SOLdumper utility for reading SOL files ('flash cookies').
 * DumpShm utility finds and dumps Local Connection memory segments.
 * Fullscreen display possible.
 * Extensions for LIRC and DBus.
 * High quality, cross-platform psuedo-randomness using boost random.
 * NPAPI (Mozilla) plugin: keyboard events work, navigation and
   javascript from within movies.
 * Set and save preferences from the GUI (GTK).
 * Improved stability and robustness with malformed SWFs.
 * New User manual! Rewritten reference manual, brought up to date.
 * Many other bugfixes.

Gnash supports the majority of Flash opcodes up to SWF version 7, and
a wide sampling of ActionScript 2 classes for SWF version 8.5. Flash
version 9 and ActionScript 3 support is being worked on.  All the
core ones are implemented, and many of the newer ones work, but may be
missing some of their methods. If the browser only displays a blank
window, it is likely because of an unimplemented feature. All
unimplemented opcodes and ActionScript classes and methods print a
warning when using -v with gnash or gprocessor. Using gprocessor -v is
a quick way to see why a movie isn't playing correctly.

You can grab the Gnash sources from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnash/0.8.2,
or from Gnash CVS with the tag "release_0_8_2_final". Binary packages
for Debian or RPM based systems will be available from your GNU/Linux
distribution, and from whatever BSD variant you are using. Experimental
binary packages built by the Gnash team are also available at
http://www.getgnash.org, along with source snapshots. Please
report packaging bugs upstream to your distribution. If you think you
have found a bug in Gnash, then you should file as complete a report
as possible at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=gnash. Patches are
always preferred to bug reports, as this is a community project. You
can submit patches at https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?group=gnash, or
email them to address@hidden As heavy bug fixing and development
is going on, please make sure your bug still exists in cvs HEAD before
reporting.

Please include the operating system name and version, compiler
version, and which gnash version you are using, in your bug
reports. For bugs in the plugin, please also add the browser and
it's version. Gnash does not support Firefox versions below 1.0.4.

Questions about Gnash or offers of help can go to the developers email
list at address@hidden

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