Hartti Suomela's Forum Nokia Blog
Fragmentation and Flash Lite
hartti | 31 March, 2007 02:07
<start of rant>
So far I have believed the mantra that Flash Lite works the same way across the devices and that there is no fragmentation in Flash Lite. Well, based on my recent experiences, I need to re-think my stand on this...
I was creating a simple Flash Lite app for a short article. The app would retrieve pictures and some data ovet network. Of course, as I wanted to load pictures, not swf animations, I had to use Flash Lite 2. After some sweating I was able to get my app running on the testing tools of Flash Professional 8. Task completed - I wrote the instructions to recreate the app and was ready to submit the article.
For some reason, I decided to test the app on a real device. Big mistake :-)
First device failed completely (I was using Flash Lite 2 enabled Series 40 device). The second test was with S60 phone with developer version of Flash Lite 2.1 installed (available from Adobe Web site). Now the application started, but still there were some quite sever issues. I was either able to get the image downloaded or then the data, but never the both at the same time. Also the soft key -based navigation required extra work as my initial code did not work. Of course everything worked perfectly in the "phone emulators" on my desktop.
Lessons learned: Always test with a real device and always test with all devices you are targeting.
<end of rant>
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Re: Fragmentation and Flash Lite
biskero | 02/04/2007, 15:11
Ciao Hartti,I would say that the challenge is now focusing on UI more then code. In any case the FL fragmentation is due to OEM more then the technology.
One example is the Video API which does not work on S40 but it does on S60. As far as I understand Nokia implemented the Flash Lite player on S40 considering the platform limitations and the targeted segment of these phones.
Just FYI, if you embed video in an swf play it back on an S40 with Flash Lite 2 it works!
Alessandro
Re: Fragmentation and Flash Lite
hartti | 02/04/2007, 20:54
Good points, both of you.However. In the long run it does not matter where the fragmentation comes from. Based on my experiences I find it hard to say anymore in my Flash Lite presentations that Flash Lite is not fragmented.
Hartti
Re: Fragmentation and Flash Lite
santahon | 10/04/2007, 09:47
Then there is also the "good fragmentation", often known also as evolution. These are differences caused by new sw versions and features, hw differences such as new resolutions or different keyboards etc, etc... Adapting to this is equally difficult for developers but we have no intention to stop the evolutionary fragmentation. Rather, the focus on this should be on documentation.
This said, there will always be fragmentation on all runtimes. Only way to get rid of all fragmentation is to stop the innovation on mobile devices. Not likely to happen?
Re: Fragmentation and Flash Lite
metahGVA | 06/04/2007, 03:40
Maybe it will finally be the portable computer smaller and not the mobile (smart)phone bigger.
Ahmet
www.metah.ch/blog
Re: Fragmentation and Flash Lite
wendongl | 31/03/2007, 19:20
(1)Device vs Emulator
You need to test on real devices. Even the application runs flawlessly in code, it could perform very differently on real phone, such as network, animation, available memory etc.
(2)Fragmentation
We have already have different version of Flash Lite - 1.1, 2.0, 2.1. Different devices has different support for fscommand. Flash Lite will not end the fragmentation issue for sure.