Analysis of FlashLite
February 1st, 2006
I am following Macromedia (and now Adobe) efforts in the mobile since several years, and FlashLite became more interesting recently. Not due to the introduction of FlashLite2.0, which I do not think is the key point, but due to the support -even partial- of SonyEricsson after Nokia.
That’s why, in this entry, I will try to analyze what could the key success factor (and of course, weaknesses) of FlashLite.
Strengths of FlashLite:
- Good development environment. The Flash authoring tool is a good tool for designer, and allows them to create quickly great animation, very hard to achieve in a non vector graphic based environment.
- Good graphical performance: easy development of UI, etc… A Flash Based UI is easy to do, with great features, fun feedback, especially for mobile phone. I usually do not like Flash based UI on the web, as designer tends to recreate their own metaphor, but one the mobile, there is still a lot of room for UI creativity.
- Proprietary technology. That’s the good side of being proprietary: you can do what you want, include feature without asking the community, making mistake, solve them, choose to support something, etc… very quickly. But there is a downside!
What could slow down or eventually kill FlashLite:
- Macromedia/Adobe just start to really experiment the issues of platform interoperability. For instance, reading the notes from FlashLite1.1 documentation , and from the experimentation I have on my phone, I have realized that even in the Flash world, things are not so easy…
- On most of the phone, player CAN NOT be updated! So if shipped with million of phones, then it will remains for some time. No nice screen asking you to update to FlashLitex.x if a feature is not present.. That’s the same problem with MIDP* Proprietary technology! And operators do not like this. If the choose Flash, and then it became a market request, than they are stuck with Macromedia.
- FlashLite, in my view, is still a Designer technology. I recently do another attempt to do something useful using FlashLite, and no doubt, development environment is still designer oriented, and not developer oriented. No doubt that’s a clear choice, and one of the strength of Flash, but this means also that this will restrict general usage of the technology. Learning curve will probably be bigger for developers.
- A success of SVG/J2me…SVG just manages the animation part, and the spirit is that J2ME manage the behaviour. On the paper good, but there are several issue: first, there is not yet a good environment development (like Flash) to enable this. Then, J2me app must be downloaded and installed. Then can not add downloaded code on the flight. This limits a lot the possibilities. I guess that something like a SVG+a scripting language (with a J2ME based interpreter) might solve the solution.
Don’t take me wrong. I think that 2006 will be a big year for Flash, and I will try to investigate more the technology, as it provide many great advantages today, compared to alternative.
My ideal whish is to see the emergence of a better “cross technology” compatibility/communication, between the major ones: JavaMe, which is the clear leader, FlashLite, a true challenger, and the new generation of mobile HTML (the Opera Mini trends, Mobile Ajax, etc….). This does not happens yet…..
Technorati Tags: FlashLite, JavaMe, J2me, Wireless, MobileAjax
Entry Filed under: FlashLite, JavaME, MobileAjax, MobileWidgets, Wireless
7 Comments Add your own
1. Marco Casario | February 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Hi Tom,
good analisys, but you missed some important points :
Strengths of FlashLite
- FL development does not imply doing lots of testing on target devices
- OOP with Actionscript 3 support
- No fragmentation (
- SVG Tiny compatibility
- FL 2.0 supports video device capabilities (you can play/stream 3gp files)
- consistent runtime across profiles
- in my opinions FlashLite is not a designer technology (maybe it is in Asia, where FL is used for ringtones, animated wallpapers ..)
- in some phones you can update the player just updating the firmware (Nokia phones)
Cons :
- FlashLite is not low-level in mobile development
Have a look at my old post on J2ME vs. FlashLite :
http://casario.blogs.com/mmworld/2005/08/flashlite_or_j2.html
2. Marco Casario | February 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm
ops …. when I wrote :
OOP with Actionscript 3 I meant Actionscript 2
3. TomSoft | February 3rd, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Thanks for your comments Marco.
I think that what you are describing is the “ideal” target of Flash. However, from my “small” experience with Flash on my SonyEricsson, who is supposed to support FlashLite1.1, I already haves difficulties to make work several FlashLite 1.1 files.
It seems that all of them works on Nokia S60, but not on SE. That’s why I think that fragmentation on Flash is already a reality.
Now regarding SVG tiny compatibility, can you describe it more? I now that Macromedia support includes a SVG Tiny players in some of his FlashLite implementation.
About the player update, Flash will have the same issue than all the embeeded techno: if it’s OpenOS (Symbian, Smartphone) update might be possible, but impossible on most of the mass market phones. So real advantage or disadvantage compared to others technoç
Last point, about “designer technology”: the development environment is -in my view- much more suited for designer than for developper. Again, I play the dummy guy, but it’s probably the first time that I have so much difficulty to learn a new environment and to do some simple things with it.
4. Bryan Rieger | February 3rd, 2006 at 6:50 pm
Hi Tom,
Great post. FlashLite is quite interesting but Adobe has a long way to go to get any decent adoption. Nokia is a good start however.
I’m also somewhat suspect in regards to OEMs and carriers licensing yet another proprietary player technology. I think the mobile industry has been down this path too many times to easily be swayed to Flash Lite at this stage.
A couple of links that might be of interest:
First, OpenLaszlo apps running on FlashLite 2
http://weblog.openlaszlo.org/archives/2006/02/openlaszlo-running-on-a-cell-phone/
Second, the OpenAjax initiative that also includes OpenWave:
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=97D640A5-48E2-4078-A131-D7256CA376DC
The Flash/Ajaxy stuff on cell-phones won’t replace Java and C++ on devices, but it could provide cost effective development alternatives to enable smaller content publishers to enter the mobile market.
5. John Dowdell | February 10th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Re: The SVG-Tiny engine inside Flash Lite 1.1… this was an optional SWF rendering library which was produced for European 3GPP compliance… from what I understand third-hand, many European phones had already contracted an SVG-T renderer, and SVG-T is low on the wishlist for Asian carriers & manufacturers… I don’t know of any distributions which have opted for that SVG-T rendering yet.
For info on how to render SVG-T in your own SWF, see other research into parsing and drawing such SVG files through ActionScript:
http://www.google.com/search?q=svg+wahlers+triolo
For distribution, Flash Lite is already an overwhelming presence in advanced markets, even though it is not yet common in emerging markets… take a look:
http://www.macromedia.com/mobile/supported_devices/
The reasons they prefer Flash Lite to Java are reduced development time, larger creative base, greater abstraction of device differences.
For “updating your phone”, you’re right, getting masses of consumers to install something there is not practical. Phones have a shorter life than computers do, though, particularly as a local phone ecology advances. Consumer adoption rates should be slower than on computers because of the embedded angle, but they’ll end up being a more solid number because it will be a capability of the phone model itself.
jd/adobe
6. » Vale a pena?&hellip | February 24th, 2006 at 8:32 am
[…] Acabei de ler um interessante post que fala dos pontos positivos de uma aplicaçao desenvolvida em FlashLite e os pontos negativos. Muito bem; os pontos negativos sao maiores que os positivos e infelizmente nao sao problemas pequenos, cito alguns: - O FlashPlayer NAO pode ser atualizado automaticamente - Sera dificil de ofuscar o sucesso das aplicaçoes em J2ME - Outra que li, mas nao no mesmo texto, existem casos de telefones que tinham FlashLite pré instalado, e na nova versao do mesmo telefone, NAO tem mais! […]
7. everypoint&hellip | March 1st, 2006 at 5:46 pm
TomSoft Analysis of FlashLite…
Quick excerpts from TomSoft’s analysis of the current state of Flashlite Pros Good development environment. Good graphical performance Cons Macromedia/Adobe just start to really experiment the issues of platform interoperability FlashLite, in my view,…
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