Dale Rankine's Forum Nokia Blog

Disabling the Virtual Keypad in Flash Lite 3 on Touch Screen Devices

2009-04-09T13:19:56+03:00

Just a quick tip for those Flash mobile developers out there playing with Flash Lite 3.0 and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touch screen device. By default the 5800 (and presumably other future S60 5th Edition touch screen devices such as the N97) displays a virtual keypad in the Flash Lite 3.0 standalone player. Even if you have included the ActionScript for playing the SWF at fullscreen [ fscommand2("FullScreen", true"); ], the virtual keypad will break full screen and take up screen real estate in the player, as you can see in the image below.

The way to avoid this is to add another line of ActionScript immediately before the fullScreen command -

fscommand2("DisableKeypadCompatibilityMode");

I personally don't think this is an ideal solution for Flash Lite on touch screen devices. I understand the use case for where a virtual keypad (which includes the 4-way directional keys, enter key and 2 soft keys) might be required with touch-based apps, but why not have it so that you can toggle it on an off, and also have it float over the top of the full screen content rather than making it look broken?

Anyway, in the meantime, if you're developing cool touch-based Flash Lite 3.0 apps for the Nokia devices then keep this code snippet in mind and don't get caught out.

What the recent Adobe mobile annoucements mean for Rich Internet Developers

2009-02-19T00:25:46+02:00

There's been a lot announced in the past week about the Flash mobile platform, and with Flash Player 10 and AIR being the next big advancement, I thought I'd write up a post on my Inside RIA blog to discuss those announcements and what they mean if you're working with Flex or AIR at the moment.

Of course if you're already developing for mobile, the announcements basically boil down to these key points:

More devices shipping with the same version of Flash as the desktop enjoys
Greater opportunities across screens with same/similar content (mobile/web/desktop) developed in Flash
Easier packaging and Flash Lite player targeting by using the Distributable Player solution
More opportunities to monetize content

You can read the full RIA post here, which spells out the main announcements in more detail.

More Flash Lite posts and information at www.dalerankine.com and www.moket.com
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Flash Lite 3 and Nokia Services Platform

2008-11-06T13:14:26+02:00

It's an exciting time to be a Flash Lite developer. I've been perservering with Flash Lite for around 4 years now, and most people who know me, know that I've put everything into it. There have been times when the excuses we've had to make for Flash Lite have made it seem a bit like "what am I really doing here!?", but times are certainly changing.

With the recent announcement of the S60 5th Edition OS release, Flash Lite developers have some added bonuses, namely the introduction of Flash Lite integration with the new Nokia Platform Services. For the first time, native ActionScript classes can be used within a Flash Lite 3 application to make direct calls to services on the device, such as Camera, Contacts, Landmarks, Location, Sensors, and many more. You can read about this in the S60 5th Edition: What's New For Developers document

The new Nokia 5800 Xpress Music (or the "Tube") is the first device to have this Platform Services support. I recently announced on my business blog, that my company Moket is porting many of its games to the 5800 and its touchscreen interface for release very shortly, and the next step will be to start making use of Platform Services. We recently demonstrated the "touch" version of our game Trench Rocket at the Nokia Games Summit in Rome.

Recently, Forum Nokia Senior Architect for Emerging Technologies, Robert Burdick, recorded a webinar on the subject of Flash Lite and Platform Services - the recording is available here now. If you are attending the Adobe MAX conference in San Francisco in a couple of weeks (Nov 16-19) then you'll be hearing and seeing a lot more about this great new platform and how to use it to create a new breed of Flash mobile applications that are truley integrated with the device.But stay tuned here for more news and samples of Flash Lite 3 content being developed on top of Nokia Platform Services!

More Flash Lite posts and information at www.dalerankine.com and www.moket.com