To me, this is something to really get excited about – not just because of what the Flash Platform is going to bring to tablet devices, but because of what the future of media publishing looks like. I would read more of a magazine and engage more with advertising content if I could get it like this.

(PS Is anyone else having issues with the video starting to play or is it just me? If you experience problems (I’m in Firefox), then I also got the video to work on the XD Blog)

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.

• “Delivering video for Flash Player 10.1 on mobile devices” by Edmond Au
• “Authoring mobile Flash content for multiple screen sizes” by Christian Cantrell
• “Design tips for creating mobile RIAs” by Dave Zuverink

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.

Apple are playing this game to a certain extent by going down the path of encouraging a single package that is deployed onto an iPhone or iPad, but again you need to weigh up several factors.

Taking out all the logic that suggests “write-once” sounds like a good idea, take a step back and fully identify the use cases, experience expectations, and device features that contribute to the best possible user experience on each device. Then, with that in mind, what are the common elements between them all, and what are the differences? Then, from a development point of view, you should evaluate what it would mean to build one app that caters for all of these scenarios.

You may find that building an app-for-all-seasons becomes a very bulky and complex package, and taking the approach of still creating separate binaries for deployment onto specific devices is the best way to ensure efficient development schedules, product deadlines, and most importantly, fantastic user experiences in all situations. Of course if you architect it right, then you will be able to keep large amounts of code and logic the same across various targeted builds, and maintain and stable base on which to tweak features for specific devices that saves you a lot of time anyway.

The thing you want to avoid is trying to shoe-horn a write-once solution that works great on iPhone onto Android, web, desktop, tablet, etc and suffer from a lack of focus on the user for each of those different platforms (no mater what tools or runtimes you might be using).

I know some of this sounds a little “obvious” to some, but it’s an important comment to be made in amongst the increasingly loud noises all pushing for a write-once way of thinking.

This had to have been one of the more coordinated releases that I’ve noticed through the blogosphere/Twitterverse – it seems just about everyone on the Platform team at Adobe as either blogged or tweeted about Adobe’s announcement today regarding the new ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for the Facebook Platform API … and did so very quickly.

Either this means that a lot of these guys had some spare time today, or that they’re all very excited about the announcement. Facebook is arguably one of the biggest social media sites in the world (in case you’ve just crawled out from under that rock!) and so Facebook officially supporting an ActionScript library in collaboration with Adobe is a pretty big deal.

I’ve tried a few Flash-things in Facebook before and it’s been a little tricky. And while I haven’t cracked open this new Library yet, from all accounts this has made the jump for Flash devs into the world of Facebook apps a whole lot easier. In particular, I see this being a major announcement for the many game studios who are investing heavily into social casual games for Facebook – and many of them are using Flash to do it.

Danny Dura from the Platform Evangelism team has done a quick intro video you can check out, which is is the newly created Facebook DevNet section on Adobe.com.

I’ve been in the tail end of a couple of projects recently and have just realised how long it’s been since I last blogged! My Toy Tragic site is also in need of some new content, but that one will have to wait for the time being. Thought I would just link to some recent stuff that’s been in Flash Lite recently and that’s been making its way through the blogosphere …

• The Flash Lite Developer Challenge is still open for entries but you don’t have heaps of time left to submit your entry, so if you’re interested in sharing in $100k proze money, you better get crackin’
• Pasi has posted a quick sample application for the new Nokia S60 5th Edition devices that run S60 Platform Services with Flash Lite – taking information from the Contacts list and opening a Google Map for that Contact’s address. Nice simple app to take a look at if you’re getting started with Platform Services.
• Darren has been at GDC Mobile in San Francisco (following on from Evan’s wedding!) and I’m looking forward to hearing some news from him.
• Matt Pollitt, now of ustwo fame, shared some details on their recent exploits on the iPhone AppStore, and the results may suprise you …

I also have some some news to share shortly about a new Flash mobile developer community project I’m going to be working on … stay tuned