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 …
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.
Well, the renaming of Flex Builder to Flash Builder will make for even more interesting reading when you can use it to create native iPhone, Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile applications – which is apparently the goal of Elips’ Open-Plug framework. The idea is simple (and not that new) – write app in ActionScript using existing Adobe tools (Flex/Flash Builder) and compile to native platform code (C++, etc) for these mass-market mobile platforms. Others are doing it, but Elips seem to be wrapping it into a framework pretty nicely (although I’m sure the demo had a fair few smoke and mirrors in operation, as most demos at trades shows do).
Scott posted about this framework that was demonstrated at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, and I have to agree with him – I’m not surprised that this wasn’t given any airtime from the Adobe attendees. There’s some (fairly lengthy) marketing videos available, but the one you want to watch has Enrique Duvos getting a demo from the Elips guys with going from Flex and AS3 code, to a native Windows Mobile application (I love the heckles from Mark D behind the camera when he asks to see the Flex components render on the device).
And for those that don’t want to watch the whole thing – this is not rendering on devices using the Flash player. Elips bundle their own run-time with the install packages for the applications created using their framework, which is installed (hopefully just the first time) when you first run the app. The run-time is comparative in size to the Flash Lite player (around 500kb) and also similarly supports a sub-set of Flex components that make sense for use in mobile applications. The stated goal is to support the full AS3 language however. They are also apparently talking with manufacturers regarding pre-installing the run-time. Sounds like a familiar path, yeah?
Really wanted to see of course, as most of you would, the conversion from As3 to native iPhone in their video, but that might have required too much smoke and mirrors for the product at the time. Momentum is definitely picking up though in the tooling space for mobile application developers, with more and more effort being put into ways to reach the perceived “gold mines” of the mobile app stores in this brave new “off-deck” world we find ourselves in now.
More information in a white paper is promised here if you would like to keep up with this development, and I’ll certainly blog about anything more that comes to light.
I'm currently the Team Lead for "Appland" 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.
