There’s been a flurry of activity on the Adobe Developer Connection site recently due to this being the silly season for corporate announcements around mobile. Take a look at these articles and whitepapers to understand where the Flash Platform has moved to and how you will need to evolve as a Flash developer to make the most of this brave new(ish) world.
Thibault Imbert from Adobe has also authored a substantial document titled “Optimizing Mobile Content for the Adobe Flash Platform” which you can download as PDF here.
It’s great to see more and more resources being developed to assist Flash developers and designers make the jump to producing work for the small screen, but I’m mindful of the common misnomer that continues to be spoken about when looking at a “write-once, deploy-everywhere” approach to Flash development. Particularly now that Adobe AIR has been announced for devices, and the reality of a technical solution for dropping a single AIR file onto multiple devices, it’s vitally important to take a step back and remember that the user experiences for these multiple devices are very different. Read More
In this final episode of the Developing with Flash Lite series, we take a look at the main points surrounding the next stage of the Flash mobile platform – Flash Player 10.1. Find out what it all means for Flash developers creating rich mobile applications from 2010 and beyond.
I say this in the video, but wanted to also call it out here – a special thanks goes to Alan Tam and Mark Doherty at Adobe for their help in putting this video series together. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve had some great feedback from the community to say that it’s been worthwhile, which of course the main reason for doing it! Thanks everyone for watching, and maybe we’ll throw together some more videos in 2010.
I’m back in the office this week adjusting to life after the 2009 Adobe MAX conference in LA, and coming to terms with everything that was announced and demoed. There was certainly the feeling that this year ended up being all about mobile, which has been promised in the past but never fully delivered on. I think this year though, some of the Flash mobile haters would even have to concede that things are looking pretty interesting for the space. Here’s some thoughts I’ve had since returning home from MAX on the mobile-related announcements and the future of Flash on devices …
I was unfortunately unable to make it to the recently run FITC Moible conference in Toronto (Canada is on my MUST visit places list), but I managed to catch a lot of content through various blog posts and Twitter feeds. There was some particularly interesting demos and slides around Flash for the mobile platform, and a “well done” Scott, Thomas, Mark and other Flash presenters for the time they spent spreading the word according to Flash!
Here’s some of the news that filtered out from FITC:
Flash Lite 4: A new version of the Flash Lite player with AS3 support, running as a browser plugin and standalone player (for BREW apparently) on lower-end devices. With all of the opimisation work that Adobe have done on the Flash Lite player over the past couple of years (Project Tamarin, etc), it’s at a point where keeping this “lite” version of the player for limited devices is a positive move.
Flash Player 10: The version for more powerful devices, again running as the browser plugin. Standalone applications will run using AIR Mobile (all sometime later in 2010)
Device Central 3: There’s some cool new features in the next version of Adobe’s mobile testing application …
Geo emulation – emulating GPS location services on devices
Better device profile filtering in the Libraries
Easier process for creating your own profiles (something that just about everyone has asked about at some point!)
SWFPack AIR application for packaging SIS and CAB files
I’m really looking forward to Adobe MAX in a few weeks time, and getting a chance to seeing more of this demonstrated and talked about.
The 2009 Adobe MAX conference in LA is less than 7 weeks away now, and things are really getting pulled together to make this a great conference for attendees and speakers alike. I’m really looking forward to it as it’s likely to be my only overseas trip this year, and I’ve been missing those long haul flights so much Seriously though, attending and speaking at MAX for the past 4 years has been a real highlight for me professionally as well as personally, and I get so much out of being around the dev community and Adobe-ans for a week or so.
I just wanted to quickly draw your attention to the sessions that I’m involved with over the course of the conference. There’s literally hundreds of opportunities to learn and engage with the conference over the 4 days, so I encourage you to attend and check out the dull range of sessions and speakers.
Developing and Distributing Mobile Applications – Sunday Oct 4th, 9am-5pm
I’ll be running this full day workshop to take attendees through various processes, features and considerations of developing for the Flash mobile platform, and also the final piece of the puzzle with distributing your applications.
Multi-screen Streaming Video Bootcamp (BYOL Lab) – Monday October 5th, 2.30pm
Learn how to use standard Flash Player features with Flash Media Server to deliver your video content seamlessly to consumers across multiple platforms. In this lab, we’ll cover recommended workflows, encoding guides, and distribution options for the desktop, mobile devices, and the digital home. I’ll be assisting Adobe Platform Evangelist Tom Krcha with his presentation.
Multi-screen Development Bootcamp (BYOL Lab) – Wednesday October 7th, 1.30pm
Dive deep into development and design techniques for multi-screen applications built with the Flash Platform. You’ll create a scalable cross-platform application using common assets and Flash Player features and learn how to package and distribute it anywhere from desktop computers and mobile phones to the digital home. I’ll be assisting Adobe Platform Evangelist Serge Jespers with his presentation.
I'm currently the Experience Architect and Team Lead for the "Appland" team at Vodafone Hutchison Australia, based in Sydney. Views on this blog are my own and not that of my employer. More about me.
I’m back in the office this week adjusting to life after the 
Seriously though, attending and speaking at MAX for the past 4 years has been a real highlight for me professionally as well as personally, and I get so much out of being around the dev community and Adobe-ans for a week or so.