Upcomging Adobe Webinar: Mobile for Flash Developers

Via Mark: You can now register for an upcoming Adobe webinar featuring David Brown from AgencyNet (the guys who built Atlantic Records Fanbase), talking about mobile development for Flash developers:

Mobile for Flash Developers
Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:00 A.M. PST
In this session David Brown from AgencyNet will uncover the key factors to consider when developing and deploying content to multiple devices with Adobe’s distributable player solution. Topics include Multilingual content, multiple input types, and consistent user experiences across screens.

Register here!

Developer submits Flash Installer to iPhone App Store.

** UPDATE. Seems my friend "WL" has either scammed me and everyone else, had his app rejected and didn't want to fess up, or has been contacted by Adobe Legal :) Either way, his blog post has now been removed. **

I received a comment on my InsideRIA blog this morning from a developer ("WL") who has posted on his own iPhone-related blog that he has created a custom installer for "Adobe Flash mobile" for Safari ...

Great news everybody.  For the past few months I have been working on an app called “Flash Installer” that does exactaly what you would think it does. Installs Adobe Flash mobile for use in Safari and all UIWebViews (when a web page opens up in an app). It does this by targeting files in the webView and tweaking a .plist and installing my custom made plugin. It was extremely hard to do this and not break any rules. After a lot of thinking, I have decided to make Flash Installer free.

More than a few questions sprung to mind when I read this, not the least was Apple's response to this submission. The developer claims that this doesn't break any SDK guidelines or rules (and I don't know all of them personally) but I fail to see how Apple would allow a third party application to modify Safari on an iPhone to run a third party player that they have been very vocal about not needing (as far as I can tell, Apple seems determined to keep Flash OUT of the iPhone browser)

Going on the comments made after this post, there's more than a few of us that are sceptical about the success of a submission to the App Store of this nature. Even with the App Store's absimal record with their submission process, I can't see this one slipping through the cracks. Will try and follow up anyway and see what happens.

Moket becomes Premium Publisher for Nokia's Publish to Ovi

***UPDATED - Seems that I should have read the documentation more closely, but it seems that Ovi at this time does not support the sale of Flash mobile personalisation content, but just the standard JPG, GIF, PNG and SVG image formats instead. Funny that in our conversations with Ovi and Nokia, and through the application process, no one pulled us up on this when we were asking to sell Flash mobile wallpapers as well as applications and games? Anyway, we'll sell the static content we have in the meantime, and hope that the Ovi system expands to accommodate Flash mobile personalisation in the future (although for the life of me I honestly can't work out why this isn't the case right from the start!?) ***

For those of you who haven't heard, Nokia's new Ovi "app store" will be launching in May, giving developers of Flash, Symbian, Java and WRT applications a new global distribution channel to 10's of millions of devices (estimated 400 million by the end of 2010). Moket, along with many other Flash mobile developers that we know, have been accepted as publishers for the initial intake of application/game content. However, we've also become a Premium Publisher which means that we can also sell mobile personalisation content.

Some may be wondering why selling wallpapers would come under a "premium status" and selling full blown applications and games is the easier option. Good question I guess :) My guess (and it's just a guess - am prepared to be given more info from a Nokia person if they would like to comment) is that Nokia want to be seen competing on the "app store" front first and foremost. This means a good QA system and a steady stream of targeted applications and games at various price points. These are not the types of content that are generally "mass produced".

On the other hand, personalisation content is much more common with a huge gap in what is "good" and what is "not so good", if you know what I mean :) Nokia would be wanting to keep a tighter grip on what kind of content they populate the store with, to avoid it becoming another over-stocked portal with a million "hot babes" or "glowing skull" wallpapers!

Anyway, you can watch a recent Nokia webinar from Bill Perry to learn more about Publish to Ovi, and stay tuned for the launch in early May.

Give Adobe your thoughts on the future direction of Mobile Packager and Distributable Player

Mark has opened up a blog post for comment, asking for input on the future direction of Adobe Mobile Packager and Distributable Player (and perhaps more broadly, Flash Lite).

It's important for the developer community to make their voice heard at these times, so please drop some thoughts into the comments box on Mark's blog so that Adobe get a real sense of what we think.

Flash Mobile - Be Loud. Be Proud.

Disabling Virtual Keypad in FL3 on Nokia 5800

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) 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.

Teaser for Upcoming Green Lantern Animated Film

Something of interest to those of you who might read my other blog (www.toytragic.com) - the first teaser trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern animated feature film (straight to DVD mid 2009) - "Green Lantern: First Flight".




Go Hal Jordan!

Twouble with Twitters

At one point I did actually "de-Twitter" for several months, and then for some reason got back on (and haven't jumped off again). More and more people I speak with though (and by that I mean REALLY speak with in person and not just on Twitter) are becoming overloaded and overwhelmed with the amount of social media they involve themselves with and that surrounds them. Perhaps at some point social media will implode, kind of like a Web2.0 tech crash? Anyway, until that time comes, watch this funny comment on social networking ... and yes, I did tweet this on Twitter (@dalerankine or @toytragic if you want to follow me ;)