Archive for July, 2009
Flash Player to take over “Mobile” gaming?
Posted by Mark Doherty in , Flash Player, Industry News, Mobile Content on July 30, 2009
I just saw an interesting post over on Twitter that talks about how Flash will take over the mobile gaming space. Paolo Munoz suggests that with our current position for gaming on the web, that Flash on devices should become a natural progression for the platform.
There are some interesting points, some of which are good like the Facebook applications/games strategy. Yet some points are assumptions and not well understood, and so that’s something that I’ll explain here. This post is not meant as a criticism in any way of Paolo, but more an exploration of the fact/fiction.
Flash on Smartphones
While the delivery of Flash Player 10 to (high end) smartphones will undoubtedly be a great boon for those working with AS3, but it’s not a panacea for development. You will absolutely have to purchase hardware for the last mile of development, you will have to deal with new interaction paradigms, and you will be working within performance limits.
Device support will initially be very limited, maybe two or three devices and running only in the browser. Flash Lite 3 will continue to be the mainstay on shipping devices for around 1 year from my own projections. The Open Screen Project however enables us to drive the adoption of the latest player, where possible, within a much shorter period of time.
We’ll see betas later in the year by leading OEMs, but it is unlikely that these will be for consumers, it’s a bit of an unknown.
Flash and GPUs
In this section Paolo picks out the fact that performance has always been a key concern for the community. That’s exactly why Flash Lite has a different memory management model and rendering capabilities, it’s a demonstration of just how different things are on mobile and devices.
In the past year we’ve seen devices with extremely high resolution screens, high end processors to drive them, huge amounts of memory and OpenGL ES/OpenVG hardware. They are very expensive and typically available in major markets in low/medium volume. It’s not a huge issue in reality, but to reach users you’ll need to get smart on your targets and markets.
Ok so the use of hardware acceleration for Flash Player is first and foremost to gain “acceptable performance” in line with Flash Lite’s capabilities on these devices. We’ll be doing our best to ensure that everything is available, but everyone must understand that some devices will just not be capable.
Filters and other high requirement features may not be supported in hardware, in fact the hardware may not be there 
In these situations there will be a fallback, but you’ll need to get smart on what they are, how they work, and what to do about it just in case.
We’ll be here to help obviously but to bang the drum again, get working with Flash Lite now to understand the complexities.
FITC Mobile – Toronto (with Sneaks ;-)
Posted by Mark Doherty in Conference, Flash Lite, Industry News, Mobile Content on July 29, 2009
This September I’m going to travel to Toronto to present at the FITC conference. It’s set to be an exciting show with all of the major mobile platforms being supported including Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, Flash Lite, Blackberry, OpenGL ES and of course iPhone development. There’s even going to be a session on SMS Applications, something that is probably a lot more interesting that you’d think!
Flash Sessions
- Martin Barclay & Robert Burdick from Nokia: Develop and Distribute for Nokia smartphones
- Scott Janousek: Practical Design and Development with Flash on Mobile Devices
- Scott Janousek: Leveraging Accelerometers on Mobile Devices
- Thomas Joos: Tips and Tricks for Flash Lite Optimization
- Weyert de Boer: Android for Flash Developers
- Mark Doherty: Flash Lite Distribution and the Open Screen Fund
So as you can see there are going to be a number of presentations on Flash topics. In my session I’m going to probably break the rules and just sit and have a chat with everyone. Distribution is a complex topic and one where many misunderstand where money is made.
On top of that I’ll also be showing off sneak peaks, so if you’re in the Toronto area and not coming to Adobe MAX then I suggest you start booking 
Prices are very low at $209 and $89 for students.
Sony Ericsson release Flash UI Components in AS2
Posted by Mark Doherty in Flash Lite, Mobile Content on July 29, 2009
A few days ago the team at Sony Ericsson released their first set of UI components for the Flash Player on mobile devices. Written in AS2 and fully integrated with Adobe Flash Professional CS4.
Each of the controls are fully customizable use the Component inspector, enabling you to change the look and feel for your applications. Everything from background colors to text values and icons are supported across the components, it’s ridiculously easy to make them fit with your apps look and feel.
The beta set includes 8 new components ready for you to use:
- Checkbox
- List – Single Row with Icon
- List – Two Rows with Icon
- Progress Indicator
- Push Button
- Radio Button
- Softkey Bar
- Wait Indicator
How to Get Started
Once you’ve downloaded the MXP file here, you can install the components by simply double clicking on the file. The Adobe Extension Manager will install the files and add them to the Components Panel in Flash Professional, you can open it using the Window Menu within the tool.
As you see it’s then possible to start dragging the UI components onto the Stage here on the left, which in my case is set for a Sony Ericsson C905 device at 240×320. By default the components come with a nice Sony Ericsson look and feel, and if you’re like me then a little help in the UI department always helps (as you’ll see later).
Using the component inspector (shown here in the middle) you can then start to customize the look and feel of the list. Check out just how much you can configure the components simply by clicking a few options, it’s really very nice indeed.
Ok, so I said about that my design talents need some work but I’ve played around with the various options and come out all blue. Additionally, since the list component is using live preview, you can see your items directly and the active scrollbar on the stage.
Of course you can configure these options with Actionscript too, which is pretty much required for anything other than static lists. Yet for colors and sizes there’s a real value in having live preview components, particularly for the designers among you.
In the image above I’ve added a softkey menu to enable me to buy some Star Fruit, which is shown selected at the top. Using the component inspector I can set each of the items too, and so disable items that may be unavailable. I can also change their color for highlighted, selected and disabled items directly in the tool.
Now that I’ve completed my list I can add a simple shadow fill and the Wait Indicator component (in circle mode) to animate when the purchase is taking place. Again it’s configurable so that I can make it fit in with my application, and of course control the spinning of the circle in Actionscript.
Then I’m ready to test in Device Central CS4 to ensure that everything looks great, before a bit of testing on the Sony Ericsson C905
Remember that it’s possible to begin using these components along with the extensive list of MXP files for Project Capuchin. Targeting Capuchin devices enables you to deliver standalone applications that have full access to JavaME apis on the JP8 platform, there are seventeen devices already.
Don’t forget the PlayNow Arena available on 38 devices, 17 countries and 200million users!
Flash Player Marketing for the HTC Hero
Posted by Mark Doherty in Android, Flash Player, Industry News on July 28, 2009
Today I was holding an analyst briefing here in London on our Digital Home Platform, and on the way to the office I spotted the advert above for the HTC Hero. The launch of the device will happen on the Orange network here first, but there’s an interesting addition in the marketing.
As you can see “with Adobe Flash Player for an enhanced online experience” represents basically the only feature other than the tariff. So in itself Flash support has become a marketable feature item, that’s great progress for the Flash Platform.
I believe this is the first time that we’ve seen this with mobile phone advertising, so keep your eyes out for more of this!
Adobe Wave on Labs
Posted by Mark Doherty in Industry News, Mobile Content on July 23, 2009
While this step in the release is for desktop computers using Adobe AIR, you can easily imagine this running on mobile devices or in the Digital Home. In fact the team behind Wave were responsible for the Flash Cast and Adobe® Mobile Server, and published the open Mobile Content Delivery Protocol from the latter product.
Wave is of course not Flash Cast, but it has really nice similarities such as the ability to automatically get content and notifications from your favourite sites and brands. You can register for notifications using the beautiful interface from our Experience Design team, then simply setup the application with what you’re interested in.
Once added you can configure the notifier application with your settings. This could be your myspace profile or simply that you’re only interested in technology news from digg.
Of course we intend to grow the number of Publishers, and in fact you too can become a publisher if you have a popular blog or website. There’s a rather bizarre video here, sounds like the Star Trek computer and advertises Bruno