Abobe Announces Open Screen Project 2008

Published by MarkD on May 1, 2008 in Adobe AIR and Flash Lite. 13 Comments

Open Screen Partners

Today we announced the Adobe Open Screen Project which is dedicated to ensuring a consistent rich Internet experience across a broad range of digital screens and form factors including mobile phones, consumer electronics, televisions and personal computers. This experience will be driven by Adobe Flash Player and in the future Adobe AIR and is meant to ensure that designers and developers can focus on the consumer experience and know their efforts will scale across different platforms and screens. Simply put the mission of the Open Screen Project is meant to enable a consistent runtime environment for designers and developers across desktops and devices.

Ryan Stewart has some great thoughts about what this means for the desktop space and below are my impressions of what this means for the non-PC space and developers.

Who’s involved
In order for the Open Screen Project to be successful we need the support of companies that believe in this unified vision of the future. These companies include leading chipset vendors, device manufacturers, operators and media companies – all intent to help deliver consistent rich internet applications across a broad range of devices and desktops. These are the initial companies that are involved with the project and we expect other companies will want to join.

  • Adobe
  • ARM
  • BBC
  • Chungwha Telecom
  • Cisco
  • Intel
  • LG Electronics
  • Marvell
  • Motorola
  • MTV Networks
  • NBC Universal
  • Nokia
  • NTT DoCoMo
  • Qualcomm
  • Samsung Electronics
  • Sony Ericsson
  • Toshiba
  • Verizon Wireless

Flash and Adobe AIR to be Free
To support this project we will be opening access to more of our core technologies to help enable web innovation and include these initiatives:

  • Removing restrictions on the use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
  • Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
  • Removing license fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
  • Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and AMF protocol for robust data services

What should mobile developers do
Keep on creating the types of experiences and content you already do for mobile phones using CS3, Device Central and other tools for development and testing. The key thing you should take away from the Open Screen Project is Adobe is committed to providing a consistent runtime across a wide range of devices including personal computers so continuing to build your skills now to develop Flash Lite applications will be part of the future growth opportunities for you and your clients as Flash and Adobe AIR are supported on non-PC devices. In short, learning how to build mobile experiences now will be your differentiator.

It’s true that today desktop developers can use Flex and Flash to create web content and Adobe AIR applications and mobile developers can use Flash CS3 to create Flash Lite content for supported handsets. In the near future desktop developers will be able to use their skills for creating Flash and Adobe AIR applications for more than just desktop PCs. What will improve will be the workflow and output options for Flash and Adobe AIR applications and for us that’s important – to ensure that designers and developers have the best tools so they can focus on the experience.

Types of non-PC devices
One of the main benefits to OSP is the ability for us to provide to designers and developers a runtime environment that works across a wide range of non-PC devices, in addition to the PC space. I use the term “non-PC” often but to give you some context these are some of the types of devices we’re looking to support in the future:

  • mobile phones
  • mobile Internet tablets (MIDs)
  • set top boxes
  • televisions

Over 1 billion devices by 2010 2009
We’ve updated our device forecast and expect that by 2009 there will be over 1 billion devices that will have shipped that support Flash technologies. Previously we stated that we would reach this number by 2010 – so this is more good news for the Open Screen Project and shows the explosive growth of Flash technologies in mobile phones. These are cummulative shipments, not the devices in peoples pockets.

Next steps
If you’re a desktop developer and have read this you’re probably starting to envision a very cool future where you’re able to extend your applications beyond just the desktop. Our take on it is that in the future you’ll be building your mobile applications first, and adding elements for the desktop, for me that’s the future. I’ve only touched on some of the high-level points here and there certainly will be more news coverage about this initiative over the next few days and weeks. If you have any questions about this please leave a comment here and I’ll answer them.

You can read more about the Open Screen Project here as well as an FAQ.

Sony Ericsson - Capuchin - Flash Lite 2.1

Published by MarkD on April 30, 2008 in Flash Lite. 3 Comments

Today at JavaOne SEMC announced the Capuchin project, a bridge between Flash Lite and Java ME on their feature phones.  Java applications run at native speeds on Sony Ericsson handsets, so don’t be fooled, this implementation is very fast.

This means that by the end of this year you will be able to create Flash content for standalone applications and use a set of new actionscript APIs to access device data. Content will be packaged in the familiar Jar format and signed using the standard mechanism, exactly what you all asked for!

I’m really excited about this project, it seems like the best of both worlds.

Adobe Flash Lite 3.1

Published by MarkD on April 29, 2008 in Flash Lite. 11 Comments

For some time now we’ve been working on a new version of Flash Lite to answer the problem of web compatibility on devices. Flash Lite 3.0 has proved really successful, with the addition of Flash Video and performance increases our partners have been able to deliver new and exciting experiences on their devices.

Nokia are now shipping Flash Lite 3.0 on 9 S60 devices through a mixture of mandatory and firmware upgrades, and have released the first S40 device with Flash Lite 3.0, the 6300i.

Flash Lite 3.1 is a dot release because we are simply altering a few features, some new and some enhancements to ensure that web browsing is as good as possible. Here is a feature snapshot:

  • Improved Web Browsing, 91% of top 500 internet sites.
  • Flash 9 (AS2 only) support
  • Local Connection / HTML Text / GetURL_target / CSS support / WMode
  • H.264 support / Improved video support (smoothing, seek)
  • Improved memory handling for images
  • MP3 Streaming support
  • Linux Reference port

Flash Lite 3.1 has already been released to our partners and you should expect to see it on devices by the end of the year.

If you have any questions then feel free to leave them in the comment field.

Adobe MAX 2008 - Call for Sessions

Published by MarkD on April 25, 2008 in Adobe MAX. 5 Comments

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Currently the event teams at Adobe are hard at work planning Adobe MAX 2008 to be held in San Francisco, Milan and Tokyo. We’re really excited to be holding the North America event in San Francisco, which is the home of the Mobile and Devices team.

Adobe MAX is all about YOU the developer, so if there is one event to attend this year then this is it. You’ll get to meet with literally thousands of attendees and see sessions from the best and biggest in the industry. Last year was my first despite being an Adobe employee for over three years. Even though it was only my second week on the job I did manage to squeeze into the Nokia session to get on stage :-)

So this is your opportunity to shape the event for your needs. We want to hear about the kinds of sessions that you want to see, the people and companies that you would most like to hear from. You can even volunteer yourself for some stage time if you’re feeling brave!

Needless to say Bill and I will be there and we’ll be inviting our key partners in the industry to join us.

Feel free to leave a comment and for sure visit the MAX page to suggest sessions and join the mailing list.

Mark

Adobe Mobile Future …

Published by MarkD on April 16, 2008 in Flash Lite. 6 Comments

This week I’m in San Francisco where our Mobile business is run. I’m here with the core EMEA team to work on strategy for the coming year.

Importantly last week we announced that are Mobile and Device Business Unit (MDBU) will merge into the Platform Business Unit. I’m sure you can guess what that means in terms of technology, but suffice to say that we are changing strategy.

Historically at Macromedia Flash on Mobile Devices was seen as a complimentary strategy, an opportunity for Flash developers to reach into mobile. In the last two years it has become increasingly apparent the structure of how we build our products has to change. Building products for mobile after the desktop results in a poor developer experience, and a difficult task for developers moving between different platforms and runtimes.

As a developer focusing on Flash Lite or Flash Cast these changes are an indication of how much Adobe are orientated towards mobile. Bill and I are really excited about this, it really helps everyone at Adobe focus on Mobile and Devices as a core element of the products.
You can read the official press release here. If you have any questions feel free to drop me an email at mdoherty [at] adobe [dot] com.