Hartti Suomela's Forum Nokia Blog

Tips and tricks Flash Lite session @ MAX

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:18:52 +0200

My notes from the 20 tips and tricks session (attendance about 50 people) by Alessandro P (biskero), Darren O, Scott J, and Dale R. I expect the slides to be available somewhere, sometime... as these notes are not always very clear :-)

Make the app work first (before making it pretty) - remember to also add Exit button
Stay below 70% memory
Remote Data and Flash Lite - remember data costs, name-value pairs are still powerful, remember getURL, 3gp for video and aac for audio, for FL 3 use flv, avoid using XML whenever possible for large amounts of data, SWX
A challenge with Flash Lite and firmware updates, as there are differences between FL2 qand FL3 - WURFL (as you would need to know about which FL version you are running on)
Optimize your loops - negative while-loops are fastest of all, avoid function calls in loop condition (instead run it once before loop if value does not change)
Join the deprecation appreciation society - even though the some old FL1.1 functions are deprecated, they might still be faster than the new replacements from AS2
Use the keypad on the phone for navigation (an remap your numeric keypad on the PC to "simulate" phone keypad, which is reversed, meaning 2 is up and not down... this means both device central and PC's Web browser)
Test automation through Device Central- create a device set, and run the same test on all devices (you could also take a screenshot of every test run for examination)
Remote on-device testing - leverage Nokia RDA and Mobile Complete by Device Anywhere
Device profiling - test the devices with FPS monitors or use the Device Central profiling features
Extending Flash Lite (will be available Adobe MAX) - possibilities: KuneriLite, Janus, Flyer, Sony-Ericsso's Capuchin, SWF2Go, there is also an article
Business tip #1: Know where your content is going to end up, regional differences, differences between manufacturers, etc.
Business tip #2: Know the market - what kind of content is popular in your target markets?
Business tip #3: Grab your customer in less than 60 seconds - spend time in making sure you get the customer to download your content, it has to stand out from the competition
Business tip #4: Use Flash for its strengths
Business tip #5: Becoming a mobile millionaire takes time

Adobe MAX San Francisco has started

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:37:38 +0200

The Adobe MAX Keynote this morning was again very interesting with lots of cool guest presenters. Even the First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, was on the stage talking about the California Legacy Trails project. Other guests included representatives from New York Times, Salseforce.com, Disney Interactive, Google (Andy Rubin) etc. (BTW, the best quote of the keynote came from Salesforce.com representative, who started his talk describing how everyone sees enterprise applications pretty boring: "The enterprise software has been where innovation has gone to die."

I am not going to mention all the bits and pieces which were mentioned during the 2-hour event (as I am sure, there are multiple, minute-by-minute write-ups available on the net), but I'll pick a few highlights.

Project (RED) seems like a great initiative to help fighting AIDS in Africa.

Tour de Flex "is a desktop application for exploring Flex capabilities and resources, including the core Flex components, Adobe AIR and data integration, as well as a variety of third-party components, effects, skins, and more." Apparently there are more than 200 examples with code already...

Hot from the enginering oven: Flash 10 was shown playing in a couple of mobile devices (N85, Win Mobile, Android) inside browser. There was also a teaser note about iPhone, but nothing concrete yet.

April is Flash Lite month at Forum Nokia

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:05:07 +0300

And hence the video player on our Lobby site is featuring videos about Flash Lite. The first one is a Flash Lite 3 and Flash video demostration by Debashish Paul (Adobe) using a YouTube FL3 app.

If you have any suggestions for videos featuring Flash Lite to be displayed on the Lobby, send me email (my first name dot my last name at nokia dot com).

Flash Lite 3 update available for CS3

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 01:17:00 +0300

On the heels of the general Flash Lite 3 announcement comes the Flash Lite 3 update for Device Central and the Flash authoring tool, now available at the Adobe Website. The developer version of the player for N95 should be available as a download from Adobe website around mid-October (at least according to Bill Perry, from Adobe)

Visiting Adobe MAX in Chicago and having some feedback for Nokia on Flash Lite?

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:08:49 +0300

As Alessandro, Scott, and others have noted many times, Adobe MAX Chicago is just few days off. I'll be there starting late Sunday evening, so unfortunately I cannot make to the MaD get-together, but please swing by the Nokia booth and say hello. Bring also your notes about feedback to Nokia for our Flash Lite implementations - both positive and negative. I'll pass them on to the Flash Lite teams inside Nokia.

Flash Lite ChalkTalks at Adobe MAX

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:30:22 +0300

Adobe MAX Chicago starts in about one week. I'll be there at Nokia booth, so please swing by and say hello if you are attending the event. You can also come by our booth and give use feedback on Flash Lite development on Nokia devices.

Also I'll have a couple of Chalk Talks (interactive 20-minute talks) at the Web and Interactive Design Technology Zone on Tuesday and Wednesday. The topics of those short talks are around Flash Lite development on Nokia devices:

Tue 3-3:20: Flash Lite on Nokia devices and support of various application types
Wed 1-1:20: Packaging and protecting your Flash Lite content for Nokia devices
Wed 3-3:20: Comparing the runtimes on Nokia devices: Flash Lite, Java ME, Python

SWX PHP - what on earth is this?

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:25:16 +0300

I got this email from Aral Balkan announcing that he has released Version 1.0 of SWX PHP and the SWX ActionScript Library. Great! Wait... What? I had to sped some time in deciphering this.

Firstly. SWX is native data format for Flash and basically a subset of SWF. SWX files are regular SWF files that can used to store just data.

The PHP part means a SWX RPC (Remote Procedureal Call) implementation in PHP - this allows one to call methods from server-side and get back the results as SWX files. The good part is that this works with Flash Lite too. Need more details? Check the SWXformat documentation.

And in case you will be visiting Adobe MAX, Alessandro has promised to showcase this technology in his talks.

Installing CS3 Design Premium - better do it overnight or during lunch

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:46:29 +0300

I am late in jumping on the bandwagon, but finally I started the installation of Flash CS3 as part of the Design Premium package (contains InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, and Acrobat Professional). I should have thought twice before starting the installation as my first task in the morning after seeing that the package would take 4.4 GB on my hard drive.

What followed was 1 hour and 15 minutes of waiting. At one point I was sure that the installer was crashed, as the bars did not move at all. I was wrong. It was just slooooow.

The end result. Partially successful installation. Failed to install the Shared Components and Design Suite Premium. Although 9 component applications were installed successfully.

The worst blow came however when I tried to start Flash authoring environement.
"You cannot use this product at this time. You must repair the problem by uninstalling and then reinstalling this product or contacting your IT administrator or Adobe customer support for help."

Nice. I guess I am not using Flash CS3 or Photoshop CS3 today...

[Update] The uninstallation seemed to be no faster. I cannot say for sure as I let it run during an extended lunch break. After I got back, everything was uninstalled, although the installer recommended a restart of the computer. Did that (which of course took about twice as long as normally), but decided to try the reinstallation only overnight...

I'll keep you posted.

PS. Anyone experienced similar installation problems with CS3?

Flash Lite 2.1 Developer Exam

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 02:44:46 +0300

Had missed this completely, but Scott Janousek pointed out that Flash Lite 2.x (2.0 really) developer exam is also available (and has been available since last May in addition to the FL 1.1 developer exam, which has been out for ages...). Here is the link to the exam guide and here the link to make the reservation for the exam (cost for the exam is $150).

Want to see the internals of a Flash Lite game?

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:47:23 +0300

Matheus Gorino has created a Mastermind board game based on Flash Lite 1.1. The game plays great (and reminded me that I suck in this game...) but the best part of the game is that the project is open source, so the source code for this game is available. Anyone can study now learn from this project how to create games with Flash Lite and make changes/improvements to the code.