Adobe is clearly determined to match Microsoft Silverlight all the way and has made a number of announcements regarding new versions of its Flash player.

To begin with Adobe have now released the Flash Player 9 update 3 which adds support for H.264 standard video as seen in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. With new hardware acceleration and multi-processor support, and new associated Media Server options, this promises to lift the ceiling for web video quality and to match Microsoft's Silverlight 1.0's handling.

Clearly matching Silverlight was a priority as Adobe has added support to the current version 9 player rather than waiting for the next release of Flex and its associated player.

Regarding this next version a few interesting details where highlighted at Adobe MAX: advanced text layout, simple 3D effects, and custom filters, blend modes and effects. The text layout capabilities sound particularly exciting holding out the promise of multi-column flowing layouts something of a holy grail for web design.

Flash 9.0 offered little to the designer in terms of end results but it's clear that Astro will be a major leap forward. All in all Adobe is pushing Flash hard to make sure it doesn't fall behind Silverlight.

Adobe's plans for Flash http://designer-info.com/web/flash/adobes-plans-for-flash.html
Astro link http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Astro