Yeah, But Is It Flash?

The iPad is a fantastic looking device but with so many manufacturers jumping on the tablet bandwagon it’ll be interesting to see what influence Flash support will have on consumers looking to make a purchase. Unlike the iPad, HP’s Slate will run the full internet, which means full support for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR.

In the video above, Alan Tan, product marketing manager at Adobe demonstrates Flash and AIR applications running on the Slate. It’s a nice looking device and the performance on the whole seems to be very good. Let’s hope HP get the price point right and that it appears nearer the first half of this year rather than the second.

Developing GamesFlash over the last few years was a great learning experience and, as I’ve said before, was something I was extremely proud of. There were times however when I felt like giving up. Although Flash Lite was a great stepping stone towards a full mobile version of the Flash player, there were terrible fragmentation issues across devices and a frustrating number of bugs introduced across various versions of the Flash Lite run-time.

When I decided to eventually add video support I came across one problem in particular that nearly lead to me having a nervous breakdown. Testing GamesFlash directly from the phone’s Flash Player application or within Device Central indicated that the Series 60 devices should each have approximately 4 Mbytes of dynamic heap available, which was enough for video support to work quite well. However, after packaging as a SIS file using various SIS packagers, I noticed that GamesFlash was suddenly only allocated 2 Mbytes of dynamic heap, which wasn’t nearly enough to comfortably run video. It resulting in the dreaded “out of memory” dialog appearing at run-time after playing a handful of videos.

Having used SWF2Go for the bulk of my SIS packaging I contacted lead developer Faisal Iqbal (AKA chall3ng3r) to see if he could shed some light on the problem. Unfortunately a workaround wasn’t forthcoming but at the time Adobe’s Distributable Player Solution came to the rescue as it packaged content without the same memory issues. With the Distributable Player Solution now cancelled I often wondered how others got round the memory problems I was having. Surely I wasn’ t the only one suffering from these memory issues.

Well I got an answer today thanks to a Tweet from chall3ng3r. Looks like it was a memory allocation bug in Flash Lite 3.0 on S60 devices, which makes memory settings in the stub launcher obsolete. Nokia have now fixed this issue and the fix is available in Flash Lite 3.1 via a firmware update. The posts made by chall3ng3r on the SWF2Go Forum indicate that the problem is specific to 5th Edition devices. I wonder if that’s a mistake as I definitely experience the same problem on 3rd edition devices such as the N95.

Yup, it’s hard to believe but Adobe AIR is now two years old and it’s incredible just how far it has come in that short space of time. Given the growing debate over Flash’s future within the browser it’s often easy to forget that the Flash platform allows developers to create rich Internet applications that can be deployed to the desktop across multiple operating systems.

AIR now powers a variety of applications used by enterprises and everyday consumers in applications for social networking, gaming, eLearning, subscription-based services, video, productivity tools, collaboration services, and so much more. And thanks to its support for iPhone, which is due to be delivered as part of the Flash Professional CS5 release, 2010 will be a very exciting year indeed for AIR.

If you are in any doubt at all regarding the power of Adobe AIR, take a look at the video above, which demonstrates a collaboration between Adobe and Wired magazine to produce a new digital magazine concept running on an Android-based tablet. It’s quite stunning.

Good news folk! Adobe have announced at Mobile World Congress their plans to bring Adobe AIR to mobile devices, starting with Android and Blackberry handsets. So what does this mean for us Flash developers? Well basically it means we’ll be able to write kick-ass mobile apps and sell them on the Android and Blackberry app stores. Check out the video below to see some content running on the Motorola Droid.

Performance looks really good and should excite Flash developers eager to generate revenue from the mobile ecosystem. Unlike Flash Lite, which is somewhat stunted, AIR apps will run the full Flash 10.1 experience, store data locally on the phone and also allow access to other data including photos. This is another significant step for the Flash platform with developers, in theory, being able to write apps that will run consistently across both web and mobile. Plus with Flash Professional CS5 on the horizon, iPhone apps will also be a possibility.

AIR on Android will be available in the second half of 2010.

What the heck is going on with Forum Nokia’s Online Flash Lite packager? It must be months now since Nokia put the project on hold meaning anyone with great Flash Lite content that they’d like to package and distribute will have have to look elsewhere for an alternative.

It’s a real shame because the online packager removed the need for Flash Lite developers to have to install the Symbian S60 SDK directly on their PC. It also meant that Mac owners could package their content without having to get access to a PC. Currently Nokia’s only suggestion is to indeed install the Symbian SDK on a PC and write a Flash Stub application using Carbide c++. For some it’s probably more effort than it’s worth.

It’s just another frustration for those wishing to create Flash Lite applications for the wide range of Nokia devices out there.

All is not lost though. It certainly doesn’t look like the Online Packager solution is gone for good. In fact Forum Nokia has this statement on its site:

We are looking into providing a reliable online packaging solution for Flash… Sorry for any inconvenience caused by this action. We did get a lot of valuable feedback for our next version and wish to thank you all for your input.

It would be great if there were some more details released regarding the new packager. Is there a scheduled release date for it and what new features are we likely to see? If anyone knows then please get in touch.

And when the Online Packager does eventually re-surface let’s hope that Nokia have fixed the ridiculous signing process for Flash Lite content. I don’t really understand why Flash Lite content for Series 40 devices can be packaged in a simple NFL file and distributed without signing, whereas all S60 Flash Lite content has to be Symbian Signed and distributed as a SIS file.

Can’t we just have something similar to the NFL format on S60 devices? Currently it’s just too expensive and time consuming for those writing freeware apps to get their work onto the OVI store. I think it’s also still the case that anyone wanting to release content on the OVI store has to be VAT registered (please someone correct me if I’m wrong) before being allowed to submit content. This again just seems crazy and must surely be preventing many great creative individuals from submitting interesting and free apps to the OVI store.

I also noticed that Alessandro Pace also has similar thoughts regarding the NFL format, suggesting that Nokia push it out across all their devices.

Oh and if you are looking for an alternative packaging solution I’d suggest you take a look at SWF2Go Professional by Faisal Iqbal.

Yeah, okay, so this post has nothing to do with Flash whatsoever. But hey I’ve got plenty of love for other technologies – even the ones that don’t support Flash.

So if you happen to have an iPhone along with the other zillion people out there then I thoroughly recommend you check out WeeWorld’s WeeMee Avatar Creator app that we released last week. It has climbed to the #4 spot in the Social Networking category of both the UK and US App Stores and it’s pretty ace.

Download it and give it a go at: http://itunes.com/apps/WeeMeeAvatarCreator

It’s not long until Mobile World Congress and those fortunate enough to be there will finally get the chance to try Flash Player 10.1 running on mobile. To-date we’ve only seen some sneak peek videos released by Adobe showing Flash-enhanced sites running on devices such as the Nexus One, but I want to know how the majority of Flash-based sites will perform, not just a carefully selected few.

It’s clear even from those early videos that Adobe has spent considerable effort optimising Flash Player 10.1 for mobile. Forcing Flash to run on mobile devices without exhausting memory and at the same time keeping performance up must be an incredibly difficult task – after all, to increase performance you tend to have to consume more RAM.

From digging around on the web, here’s what I believe the engineers at Adobe have done to address these issues.

Flash 10.1 will support hardware acceleration. This will include video acceleration where the device’s GPU will be used to decode video leading to better video quality, improved frame rate and less power consumption. It doesn’t end there though; Flash’s traditional vector rendering pipeline will also be supported by the GPU meaning that vectors, bitmaps and animation will all render faster.

A very important question regarding mobile is ‘how will the device handle multiple player instances?’ After all, it’s a frequent occurrence to see multiple SWFs served from a single page and there is a real danger that this could cripple the handset. Adobe’s engineers have spent considerable time and effort addressing this. Traditionally on a web page, every single instance is started. But for mobile, Adobe have written an instance manager that will decide which instances should be started and which should not initially.

To aid instance management there will be a new HTML parameter called hasPriority that will allow the web author to specify the SWFs that are most important to the overall experience. The instance manager will also look for helper SWFs that are typically 1×1 pixels in size and start them up. The manager will also monitor memory usage closely and shutdown instances when the device is close to running out of memory. When shutting down instances, the player begins with those that are off screen or do not have focus.

The good news is that these changes aren’t just restricted to mobile – desktop users will also benefit from many of the changes too, although I believe the GPU vector renderer will initially only appear on mobile. And for those who’ve complained about Flash’s performance and poor stability on Mac, from a tweet by Adobe’s Lee Brimelow it looks like there might be some light at the end of the tunnel regarding that too. Here’s what Lee had to say in his tweet:

We will be putting out more information about the player issues on OS X very soon. Thanks for being patient everyone.

I’m looking forward to Flash Player 10.1, especially for mobile. Now does anybody know if it’ll be making an appearance on my Nokia 5800? Looks like Android is the lead platform.

Adobe have released a video showing off some more apps created using Flash Pro CS5. What I’ve seen so far is very encouraging and the performance seems to be significantly better compared to some of the earlier releases they announced during MAX.

These apps are available on the App Store along with others that are steadily being released by many of the developers taking part in the closed beta. As well as downloading those in the video you might also want to take a look at Takayuki Fukatsu’s iPhone Metronome and BlueskyNorth’s FickleBlox.

Good news boys and girls. Steve Jobs might be trying his damnedest to keep Flash off all his shiny new toys but that hasn’t stopped Adobe from ensuring that those using the upcoming Flash Pro CS5 will be able to create applications that will run on the iPad. Content compiled using Flash’s iPhone Packager will happily run on the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It doesn’t look like they’ll support the iPad’s full screen-resolution in the initial release – I guess there’s simply no time left to add any new features before launch, but it’s clear from this quote taken from the Adobe Flash Platform Blog that it won’t be long before full-screen support arrives.

It is our intent to make it possible for Flash developers to build applications that can take advantage of the increased screen size and resolution of the iPad.

Good news and it’ll be interesting to see what innovative applications the Flash community come up with.

So here it is: Apple’s latest technical marvel.

No wait a minute, that’s not it! Ah here it is.

Sorry my mistake, but it’s an easy one to make I suppose. After all both are quite large, touch-sensitive, and extremely shiny. Any other similarities? Oh yeah, and neither support Flash, although at least the Monolith’s creators have an excuse seeing as Flash wasn’t around a billion years ago when the Monolith was actually built.

It’s clear Apple hate Flash. It’s clear Apple really want to kill Flash. And it’s clear they have a plan. If their devices can gain enough penetration then the need for Flash will diminish as more sites ditch it to ensure a better experience across Apple’s products.

I’d asked in my previous post whether HTML5 would kill Flash. I think Apple are more of a threat to Flash than any single web standard, and I still firmly believe that Flash’s future lies in its success on mobile.