As some of you know, learning about AIR, AS3, Flex, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder has been my side-project for a few months now.  As I mentioned in a previous post, it is essential to prepare for the future and invest now in learning new skills.

For me, the best way to learn new things is to create a project that’s difficult, yet cool enough to keep you interested.  So my first few steps revolved around learning how to use Fireworks, then Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and ultimately distribute an application using Adobe AIR.

AIR 2.0

One of the amazing new features of AIR 2.0 is the ability to embed and execute native code from right inside Actionscript, an API called NativeProcess.  This means that you can safely run existing services over the command line, as well as install your own native service components.  AIR 2.0 is in beta right now on Adobe Labs, and is mobile ready as designed so it’s a great time to get started.

So what would a Platform Evangelist for mobile and devices create?

Introducing Helisso

What is it?

• A packaging utility that can produce SIS packages for Symbian devices
• It targets the Flash Lite 3.x runtime for Nokia’s S60 devices
• It runs on PC and Mac OS, all versions

Details

• The tool has embedded Python binaries inside, compiled versions of “Ensymble“
• For signing purposes the tool also includes OpenSSL for certificate signing
• It is unsupported and without warranty

How do I use it?

How do I install it?

• Install AIR2 Beta first
• Windows
• Mac

I have been hugely impressed with the capabilities provided by AIR, in this only my first AS3 project.  Looking back on all of the technologies that I have used has really got me excited about AIR applications on Android, and even sprouted a few iPhone applications in advance of that.  Seriously, imagine having all of the power of AIR and this toolchain on mobile phones?

Lastly, a big shout out to Steve Hartley of Oppian, Jussi Ylänen creator of Ensymble, without whom this wouldn’t have been possible.

We didn’t take this decision lightly, and as many of you know this product has been my focus for a long time, so I’m a little sad to see it go. However in light of our new strategic direction here at Adobe, it is time to focus all of our attention on the goals of Open Screen Project, specifically with Flash Player 10.1.

The goals of the product were to:

• Enable the distribution of Flash Lite 3.1
• To open up opportunities for application distribution on S60/WM devices
• Provide a consistent platform for development as we work on Flash Player 10.1 and AIR

The solution was a success in many ways, we have had 135,000 downloads of the Mobile Packager to date. We learned a huge amount in building a complex tool and provided a footing for many of you to create mobile applications for the first time. My personal measure of success was that tens of thousands of developers and designers who were able to target mobile platforms for the first time, not to mention the great applications that were created.

Admittedly in some ways the product didn’t quite hit the mark, and we learned a lot from that. In fact the reasons that led us to create the Distributable Player now play a core part of the plan with our Open Screen Project partners. We are each playing a part to drive consistency, establish update mechanisms and enable wide distribution. Nokia has already established an OTA update mechanism for the Flash runtime, which is a great example of their commitment to the community.

Finally, some of you have asked for some guidance on applications that you had planned to launch. As you would expect we don’t intend to simply shut down the delivery mechanisms, so don’t panic.

What will happen to the product now:

• The server solution for device detection and player downloads will remain in place for 1 year (active until November 30, 2011).
• The Mobile Packager tool will be removed from Adobe Labs
• Our Labs pages and discussion Forum will be removed
• I will of course be working with some of you to enable your upcoming launches as planned

What Next?
Over the summer I have been learning all about Actionscript 3, creating my first AIR application with Flash Builder. My first application was to create a desktop interface for SWFPack.com , and a Mobile phone projector based on demofone.com for my presentations.

Additionally in the past few weeks I have also began work on my first iPhone application built with Flash Professional CS5. It’s an application that I hope we can all contribute to in time with video tutorials called “Flash Training for devices”. The first set of videos will come from Dale’s fantastic video series over on vimeo.com/adobeflashlite .

As we move through the quiet holiday period I would suggest investing in some AS3 books and training, or catching up on the Flash Player 10, Flex and AIR content available at tv.adobe.com . Investing your time now is a great way to ensure that you’re not left behind.

My best advice is the same that I follow myself:

• Set yourself achievable goals for learning this new language
• Create a sample project, one that you can get excited about and share
• Keep communicating your thoughts and experiences, we can all learn together

Here are some sneaks from my sample app to get you warmed up:

]]> http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/11/17/distributable-player-beta-ends/feed/ 8 http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/09/02/adobe-mobile-packager-reaches-100000-users/ http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/09/02/adobe-mobile-packager-reaches-100000-users/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:24:15 +0000 Mark Doherty http://www.flashmobileblog.com/?p=609

Some great news on the mobile packager, we finally passed the 100,000 users mark yesterday as shown here on the magic “Dashboard”.  This is really good news and shows that we’ve managed to reach to more developers than ever with the tool.

Interestingly enough I’m also seeing recently spikes for the Flash Lite downloads too, which would indicate that applications are finally reaching users

Note:  The orange line shows the attempted downloads, a few of which may be failures totalling 170,623 (which includes the 100,000 successful downloads).  My take on it is that these are Mac users cancelling after they discover that the Mobile Packager is Windows XP only

Either way the interesting news was that we added an update reminder feature to Mobile Packager 1.1. I added it into the feature list many months ago, but we dropped it formally and prioritized other features like multi-byte application name support.

Yet today when I started the Mobile Packager I got this …

So as you can see, the feature is there after all. As of now it points simply to Adobe.com but it does serve as a reminder that the Mobile Packager is something that we intend to improve over time.

If you haven’t already got the new tool then go over to Labs, where FINALLY we’ve managed to get it up on the Adobe Labs site. The three week delay was caused by competing products like Cold Fusion 9 and Adobe Wave which were both released in the past few days.

I’m happy to announce the further expansion of the Distributable Player to a further 15 countries bringing the total to 45 across the world. With the Distributable Player it’s possible to distribute your applications with the latest Flash player optimized for mobile devices, Flash Lite 3.1. This is the same player available on the HTC Hero and Nokia 5800 devices.

The countries are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA.

Using the Adobe Mobile Packager 1.1 you can package your SWF files and assets in native installer packages, then distribute them freely from your website or that of your customer. We’ve made it extremely easy to get started and begin to work with mobile devices in advance of Flash Player 10 availability. If you’re interested in developing for Flash Player 10 when it arrives I recommend that you get your feet wet with Flash Lite to build up your knowledge of mobile and devices interaction and optimizations.

You can see some great examples of Flash applications running on mobile devices from the Flash Lite Developer Challenge below!

Today we announced with our partners HTC that we’ve extended Adobe® Flash® to the Android platform for the first time. We really excited to finally enable rich web browsing to the open source Android platform, and particularly to such a great smartphone. As a top of the range device it sports multi-touch HVGA, accelerometers, GPS, Compass, WIFI, a 5MP Camera and the incredible Android Webkit Browser. With Flash the web browsing experience on the device is fantastic, rich and gives you access to a more complete Internet.

What will Flash on Android do for me as a user?

If you’re a user of the HTC Hero you’ll be able to view much of the available online video, of which 85% is played through Flash Player. In this mobile optimized runtime we also have support for streaming audio, and with it’s Actionscript 2.0 support we believe that you can view around 80% of the Flash content on the web today.

You’ll be able to interact with games and rich Internet sites, widgets and of course the HTC Hero is a touch device with a huge HVGA (320×480 px) screen. As a nice addition, you can run Flash content in full screen simply by double tapping on it in the browser. As Flash is scalable you’ll find that this works exceptionally well, and the experience is really solid.

In the near future we’ll be shipping full Flash Player on the Android platform, enabling the richest possible web experiences. Android is a fantastic open platform for users to consume content under your terms, happy Flashing!

I’m a developer, what does this mean for me?

As part of this announcement HTC has announced their membership in the Open Screen Project, an industry initiative led by Adobe. HTC and Adobe will work together with 25 other industry leaders to deliver the full Flash Player on a huge range of devices and platforms moving forward. As a developer this should give you some indication of the level of support that we’re seeing for the initiative. We’re really happy to see an industry leader such as HTC commit to delivering a consistent Flash Platform on their devices, and working with us for a more consistent web experience on devices.

There is no doubt that HTC have been shipping some of the most stunning devices available today, they led the charge with the first Android platform device the G1. For you as a developer this translates to significant sales to end users, and an opportunity for content distribution as the platform and devices scale. HTC reaches deep into the US, European and Asian markets and in fact we support many of their Windows Mobile smartphones with the Distributable Player which is now available in 29 countries (and counting).

As you’ve read above this device ships with Flash in the browser as a plugin, but it is accessible for immersive full screen playback. Distribution through content aggregators such as Playoo, GetJar and GamesPlaza should work really well and naturally. Another potential opportunity is to use the Android WebView class, which is essentially a way to create air like applications that use webkit. Don’t bank on this though, but do tell me if you get it to work

To read more, and see the new device in action go here.

We’ve been hard at work enabling support for new countries with the Flash Lite 3.1 player, enabling you to use the most recent player with the Adobe Mobile Packager 1.1. I’m happy to announce that we’ve continued to accelerate the addition of new countries around the world adding 16 countries, and bringing the total to 29.

The countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UK and the USA.

Right now we’re looking at how to enable support for new devices on a platform level, so rather than certifying each device we can certify whole platforms.  It’s not an easy task but we’re very confident that the player won’t start breaking.

As you know we’ve been working very hard on the next version of the Adobe Mobile Packager.  In fact a little harder than we anticipated as I’m sure you’ve noticed that I posted the sneak peek more than a couple of weeks ago.  Ultimately I wasn’t happy with some features including the Symbian and Windows Mobile signing workflows.  I think you’ll agree that the engineering team have done a wonderful job in making it easy to Create->Package->Sign->Distribute packages.

One of the features that cost some extra time was multi-byte support for install packages, which is a hard task.  Now, with the new Mobile Packager you can change your Application Name to use any accents and characters in any language.  This enables us to expand globally without restriction moving forward.

Symbian S60

With Mobile Packager 1.1, it has never been easier to get through SymbianSigned.  I have also been working with the Symbian Foundation to streamline their ingestion process and a new policy for the purchase of Publisher Ids.  The good news is that this has now been announced, and soon (2 months?) you’ll be able to purchase a Publisher Certificate cheaply, and with nothing more than a credit card.

Signing of SIS packages has been vastly improved and we’ve aligned with AIR packaging workflows from Flash Builder, it’s the same security after all.  No more tcp12p8.bat and multiple certificates, keys and passwords.  You can simply use your pfx file straight out of the browser, technically you may also use a p12 file from Firefox too.  If this sounds like Star Trek talk then don’t worry, just watch the 5min video

Windows Mobile

The downside is that Microsoft would not allow us to integrate a key component required for signing cab files called SignTool, a 74kb file.  Hopefully in the future Microsoft will see the value in helping the Flash community and provide easy access to the tools necessary for everyone to distribute on “Open OS” Windows Mobile devices.  For now though we won’t be stuck, as they say “there’s an app for that” with easy instructions in the tutorial.

OVI

With regards to OVI support, we continue to work with Nokia to enable support for the Distributable Player.  There are some minor hurdles to overcome but the focus is very much on getting OVI up and running, and I support that fully.

Tutorials

I think the tutorials were a huge success for the first version of the Packager 1.0.  Liz and I worked our socks off building out the content and this time round we’ve raised the bar, in the process we killed her hard drive, then her OS, she literally rang every corner of the globe.  So in compensation I urge you to go and watch all of them, there’s lots of valuable information condensed into no more than 30mins.

Spread the word about these tutorials, it will help us all to build on the knowledge (and pain) that we went through on this.

As we move forward you’ll notice new countries coming online for OTA distribution, we’ll see more devices and wider coverage for devices.  For example, we intend to enable all S60 3rd Edition devices for Flash Lite 3.1 giving you the choice on which devices to target.  Windows Mobile is somewhat more fragmented but our goal is to enable those devices also.

Of course all the pieces will go up on Adobe Labs, but they’ve been somewhat busy with Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst and Flex4.  So in lieu of that you can download the new Packager tool from here, and I’ll update the link afterwards.

Mobile Packager 1.1 – English

Mobile Packager 1.1 – Italian

Mobile Packager 1.1 – Spanish

I have some great news on our Distributable Player availability and our plans to scale the solution.  For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with some of you to test the download of Flash Lite 3.1 over-the-air in your home countries.  That process has gone pretty well and collectively we’re confident that our solution can now scale quickly, we plan to add countries in batches of eight on a monthly basis.

We have added support for the player download in the following countries (I tried to enable the Flash version of this but WordPress is having none of it):

We’ve also been working hard on device certification and accelerating that program by adding the most popular S60 and Windows Mobile devices.  The list is now 31 strong and will grow continually at speed.

S60 Devices

1. Nokia N78
2. Nokia E65
3. Nokia N95 8GB
4. Nokia N95
5. Nokia N73
6. Nokia N81
7. Nokia 6120 Classic
8. Nokia E51
9. Nokia N81 8GB
10. Nokia E71
11. Nokia N96
12. Nokia N82

Windows Mobile Devices

1. HTC-Pro S621(Same as T-Mobile Dash)
2. HTC S740
3. HTC Touch Cruise P3650
4. HTC Touch Diamond
5. HTC Touch P3452
6. HTC TyTN II P4551
7. Motorola Q
8. Motorola Q9c
9. Motorola Q9h (CDMA)
10. Motorola Q9m
11. Motorola Q Norman (same as Moto Q 9h(GSM))
12. Palm Treo 700w
13. Palm Treo 750
14. Palm Treo Pro
15. Samsung SGH-i607 BlackJack I
16. Samsung SGH-i617 BlackJack II
17. Samsung SGH-i780
18. T-Mobile Shadow
19. T-Mobile Wing

The Mobile Packager 1.1 release is now out on private pre-release with a few select developers to get some feedback before launch.  Last week the reigning packaging queen Liz Myers signed her first SIS and CAB files using the new tool.

Exciting times!

Today Pikkoo was announced in Beta form enabling a new form of social personalization for Flash content.  Pikkoo is a Finnish company based in Oulu (very cold) who focus on rich content production, by users and for users.

The Flash Player itself is used to produce rich wallpapers and screensavers within your desktop browser using a host of dynamic tools and images.  Of course you can roll your own and create highly personal content to share with your friends.

In the example below I’ve used a beautiful background image, a clock widget and a another clip of a snowboarder from this theme.  Themes allow you to produce your content using assets that are perfectly suited, so no more searching randomly.  Pikkoo has been designed to enable users to create the best possible looking content, with minimum design knowledge.  I can resize each of them movieclips, change their colour, animate them and group them when I want to use effects.

Personalization content using Flash Lite is rich and dynamic, so the clock and network signal widgets are live on my device.  Notice also that the stage here is 320×240 pixels because that’s the resolution of my device, making it easier that ever to produce relevant content.

Once I’m done I can create a simple thumbnail for the website, download the SWF as a screensaver or wallpaper to my computer.

Pikkoo also has aS60 3rd Edtion and 5th Edition Screensaver Manager to help me download, share and setup my screensavers.

Here are some screenshots, check out the stunning user interface created with Flash Lite.

One of the great features of this product is that Brands and Agencies can use the service to produce Themes, so that end users can create their own experiences using assets from their favourite brands.  You can imagine Disney and Nike being great candidates for user generated content created with Pikkoo.

So what are you waiting for?  Get over there and start creating!!