Flash Lite
Encyclopedia
Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player
, a software application published by Adobe Systems
. This version is intended for mobile phone
s and other portable electronic devices like Chumby
and iRiver
, and allows users of these devices to view multimedia content and applications developed using Adobe's Flash tools, which had previously been available only on personal computer
s.
Flash Lite will operate on devices with a lower hardware specification than meets the minimum hardware requirements of the full Flash Player such as the Nintendo Wii. Some features available in Flash are not available in Flash Lite, and Flash Lite has some features specifically for mobile devices.
In addition to Flash Lite, which is typically incorporated into a mobile device operating system as provided by the manufacturer, the full Adobe Flash Player may also be available for installation from the mobile device's application store (and currently only if the device has an ARM Cortex-A8
processor).
, or user interface layer. Recent changes to ActionScript
allow Flash Lite to better integrate with and even compete with device-layer technologies like Java ME and BREW. Flash Lite should not be considered a mobile operating system
like Symbian OS, Windows Mobile
, BlackBerry OS
, iOS (iPhone OS), Bada (Samsung)
or Android: it is a technology for developing applications that run on a mobile operating system.
Flash Lite 1.1 supports Flash 4 ActionScript.
Flash Lite 2.0, based on Flash Player 7, supports Flash 7's newer ActionScript 2.0. Both Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 also support the World Wide Web Consortium
's Standard SVG Tiny, a mobile profile of the consortium's Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) recommendation. Unlike SVG, Flash Lite can add audio and interactive elements without the use of other technologies such as JavaScript
. As with Flash, Flash Lite is able to read and redraw external XML
content.
Flash Lite 3 is based on Flash 8, which lessens the gap between mobile and desktop content by supporting H.264 video standard, as well as On2 VP6
and Sorenson
video codecs. Flash Lite 3 also introduces support for FLV
video content (as used by YouTube and Google Video).
Flash Lite 4.0 supports ActionScript 3 and is a browser plugin, rather than a standalone player. It further extends the Flash Lite's features with multi-touch support, an advanced text rendering engine and a geolocation interface.
completed its acquisition of Macromedia
, the original developers of Flash. At that time, Flash Lite had been available to mobile users in Japan and Europe for some time prior to its availability in the United States. NTT DoCoMo
was the first carriers to adopt Flash Lite in May 2003.
As a promotion for Flash Lite in February 2005, Macromedia
conducted its first Mobile Flash Content Contest. From the over 150 applications submitted, nine winners were selected in areas of Best Business and Productivity Application, Most Innovative use of Flash Lite, Best Animation, Best Business Application, Best Educational Content, Best Game, Best Interactive Content, Best Productivity Application, and Best Overall Use of Flash Lite.
In May 2006, the iriver U10 (later re-branded as the iriver clix) was released, which supported Flash Lite content in a landscape page orientation
. The U10 was the first digital audio player to support Flash Lite.
In 2005, almost 100% of Flash Lite enabled devices were found in Japan. In February 2007, Adobe claimed that over 70% of Flash Lite devices were shipped outside of Japan.
In October 2006, Verizon Wireless
announced support for Flash Lite
, making it the first operator in the USA to adopt the technology. Flash Lite was initially available on four handset models (Motorola RAZR V3c and V3m
, Samsung SCH-a950 and LG The V (VX9800)
) as a BREW extension. This allows users to download Flash Lite applications from Verizon's "Get It Now" service, but it does not allow users to view Flash objects from their web browser
.
In February 2007, Adobe announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that the next release of Flash Lite (version 3) would support video, including streaming video. In October 2007, Adobe announced the release of Flash Lite 3.
At Adobe's 2007 Financial Analyst Meeting, Al Ramadan, then senior vice-president of Adobe's Mobile and Voice Solutions Business Unit, announced that by December 2006, 220 million Flash Lite devices had been shipped. He also noted Adobe's acquisition of certain vector rendering
technology by Actimagine
, intended to reduce the Flash Lite player's memory footprint
in future versions.
As of March 2008, neither Adobe nor Verizon Wireless
have announced the availability of Adobe Flash Cast
, per the February 2007 press release for availability by the end of calendar year 2007. In the same month, Steve Jobs
described Flash Lite as "not capable of being used with the Web."
In September 2009, Opera Software
integrated Flash Lite 3.1 in the Internet Channel application for the Wii
gaming console.
In September 2010, John Gruber
characterized Flash Lite as a "major effort to establish a mobile software platform" that "utterly failed".
Flash Lite is a mobile development platform that can either be used in place of Java ME or run on top of Java ME in a Flash Lite Player. Other platforms include BREW, Symbian
and Windows Mobile
. In 2006 Qualcomm
announced a partnership with Adobe to bring the Flash Lite player to the BREW runtime.
Flash Lite content may be viewed on handsets installed with the Flash Lite player in the same way that Java content may be viewed on phones with a Java ME runtime. Both of these technologies may be present on the same handset and do not compete directly.
Applications, games and other content may be developed in either technology. Flash Lite has several advantages and several disadvantages when compared to Java ME.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
announced Project Capuchin, a bridge that allows Flash Lite to run as a front-end to Java ME and in this way, combine Java's APIs and direct communication with the mobile phone's hardware (bluetooth
, Wi-Fi
and others) with Flash's graphical interface.
Adobe Flash Player
The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
, a software application published by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
. This version is intended for mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s and other portable electronic devices like Chumby
Chumby
The Chumby is a consumer electronics product made by Chumby Industries, Inc.. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection. Through this connection, the Chumby runs various software widgets....
and iRiver
Iriver
iriver is a consumer electronics company headquartered in South Korea and widely known for its digital audio players and other portable media devices....
, and allows users of these devices to view multimedia content and applications developed using Adobe's Flash tools, which had previously been available only on personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s.
Flash Lite will operate on devices with a lower hardware specification than meets the minimum hardware requirements of the full Flash Player such as the Nintendo Wii. Some features available in Flash are not available in Flash Lite, and Flash Lite has some features specifically for mobile devices.
In addition to Flash Lite, which is typically incorporated into a mobile device operating system as provided by the manufacturer, the full Adobe Flash Player may also be available for installation from the mobile device's application store (and currently only if the device has an ARM Cortex-A8
ARM Cortex-A8
The ARM Cortex-A8 is a processor core designed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARM v7 instruction set architecture. Compared to the ARM11 core, the Cortex-A8 is dual-issue superscalar, achieving roughly twice the instructions executed per clock cycle....
processor).
Technical overview
Flash Lite is a development technology implemented at the client-sideClient-side
Client-side refers to operations that are performed by the client in a client–server relationship in a computer network.Typically, a client is a computer application, such as a web browser, that runs on a user's local computer or workstation and connects to a server as necessary...
, or user interface layer. Recent changes to ActionScript
ActionScript
ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. . It is a dialect of ECMAScript , and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of...
allow Flash Lite to better integrate with and even compete with device-layer technologies like Java ME and BREW. Flash Lite should not be considered a mobile operating system
Mobile operating system
A mobile operating system, also known as a mobile OS, mobile software platform or a handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device or information appliance—similar in principle to an operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux distributions that controls a...
like Symbian OS, Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
, BlackBerry OS
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, iOS (iPhone OS), Bada (Samsung)
Bada (operating system)
Bada is an operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. It is developed by the Samsung Electronics. Its name is derived from " ", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in Korean...
or Android: it is a technology for developing applications that run on a mobile operating system.
Flash Lite 1.1 supports Flash 4 ActionScript.
Flash Lite 2.0, based on Flash Player 7, supports Flash 7's newer ActionScript 2.0. Both Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 also support the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
's Standard SVG Tiny, a mobile profile of the consortium's Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...
(SVG) recommendation. Unlike SVG, Flash Lite can add audio and interactive elements without the use of other technologies such as JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
. As with Flash, Flash Lite is able to read and redraw external XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
content.
Flash Lite 3 is based on Flash 8, which lessens the gap between mobile and desktop content by supporting H.264 video standard, as well as On2 VP6
VP6
On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Video, and JavaFX media files.- Overview :The VP6 codec...
and Sorenson
Sorenson codec
Sorenson codec may refer to either of three proprietary video codecs: Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3 or Sorenson Spark. Sorenson Video is also known as Sorenson Video Codec, Sorenson Video Quantizer or SVQ...
video codecs. Flash Lite 3 also introduces support for FLV
FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...
video content (as used by YouTube and Google Video).
Flash Lite 4.0 supports ActionScript 3 and is a browser plugin, rather than a standalone player. It further extends the Flash Lite's features with multi-touch support, an advanced text rendering engine and a geolocation interface.
History
In 2005 Adobe SystemsAdobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
completed its acquisition of Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
, the original developers of Flash. At that time, Flash Lite had been available to mobile users in Japan and Europe for some time prior to its availability in the United States. NTT DoCoMo
NTT DoCoMo
is the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan. The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase, "do communications over the mobile network", and is also from a compound word dokomo, meaning "everywhere" in Japanese. Docomo provides phone, video phone , i-mode , and mail services...
was the first carriers to adopt Flash Lite in May 2003.
As a promotion for Flash Lite in February 2005, Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
conducted its first Mobile Flash Content Contest. From the over 150 applications submitted, nine winners were selected in areas of Best Business and Productivity Application, Most Innovative use of Flash Lite, Best Animation, Best Business Application, Best Educational Content, Best Game, Best Interactive Content, Best Productivity Application, and Best Overall Use of Flash Lite.
In May 2006, the iriver U10 (later re-branded as the iriver clix) was released, which supported Flash Lite content in a landscape page orientation
Page orientation
Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape...
. The U10 was the first digital audio player to support Flash Lite.
In 2005, almost 100% of Flash Lite enabled devices were found in Japan. In February 2007, Adobe claimed that over 70% of Flash Lite devices were shipped outside of Japan.
In October 2006, Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless
Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless, is one of the largest mobile network operators in the United States. The network has 107.7 million subscribers as of 2011, making it the largest wireless service provider in America....
announced support for Flash Lite
, making it the first operator in the USA to adopt the technology. Flash Lite was initially available on four handset models (Motorola RAZR V3c and V3m
Motorola RAZR V3
Motorola RAZR is a series of clamshell mobile phones by Motorola, and is one of the series in the 4LTR line. They were first developed in July 2003 and were released in the market in the third quarter of 2004....
, Samsung SCH-a950 and LG The V (VX9800)
LG The V (VX9800)
The V is a CDMA mobile cell phone. It was released For Verizon Wireless in 2005.Since then, it has been updated by the enV and enV2 , which are much slimmer and maintain most of the features of The V, while adding a 2.0 megapixel camera and stereo bluetooth support.-External links:* *...
) as a BREW extension. This allows users to download Flash Lite applications from Verizon's "Get It Now" service, but it does not allow users to view Flash objects from their web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
.
In February 2007, Adobe announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that the next release of Flash Lite (version 3) would support video, including streaming video. In October 2007, Adobe announced the release of Flash Lite 3.
At Adobe's 2007 Financial Analyst Meeting, Al Ramadan, then senior vice-president of Adobe's Mobile and Voice Solutions Business Unit, announced that by December 2006, 220 million Flash Lite devices had been shipped. He also noted Adobe's acquisition of certain vector rendering
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
technology by Actimagine
Actimagine
Mobiclip previously Actimagine develops Mobile TV and Mobile VOD software. Mobiclip has patents on its video codecs and DRM technology.The company's headquarters are located in Paris. It has a subsidiary in Tokyo and offices in Singapore and San Diego, California. Actimagine Corp...
, intended to reduce the Flash Lite player's memory footprint
Memory footprint
Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running.This includes all sorts of active memory regions like code, static data sections , heap, as well as all the stacks, plus memory required to hold any additional data structures, such as symbol...
in future versions.
As of March 2008, neither Adobe nor Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless
Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless, is one of the largest mobile network operators in the United States. The network has 107.7 million subscribers as of 2011, making it the largest wireless service provider in America....
have announced the availability of Adobe Flash Cast
Adobe Flash Cast
Adobe Flash Cast is an Adobe Systems product that delivers multimedia to mobile devices using the Adobe mobile application and provides authoring and web tools. It was originally known as Macromedia FlashCast...
, per the February 2007 press release for availability by the end of calendar year 2007. In the same month, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
described Flash Lite as "not capable of being used with the Web."
In September 2009, Opera Software
Opera Software
Opera Software ASA is a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 220 million users worldwide. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the W3C. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway and is...
integrated Flash Lite 3.1 in the Internet Channel application for the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
gaming console.
In September 2010, John Gruber
John Gruber
John Gruber is a writer from the greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area of the USA. Gruber received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University. He worked for Bare Bones Software from 2000 to 2002 and Joyent from 2005 to 2006...
characterized Flash Lite as a "major effort to establish a mobile software platform" that "utterly failed".
Versions
- Macromedia Flash Lite 1.0
- Based on Flash Player 4
- Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1
- Macromedia Flash Lite 2.0 (December 2005)
- Released in 2005, which brought its capabilities in line with Flash Player 7.
- Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 (December 2006)
- Running on the BREW platform
- Adobe Flash Lite 3 (Announced on February 2007)
- Support for FLVFLVFlash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...
transcoding - Equivalent to desktop Flash Player 8
- Support for FLV
- Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 (February 2009)
- Adobe Flash Lite 4 has been released (2010) and integrated in SymbianSymbianSymbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
^3 (Nokia N8Nokia N8The Nokia N8 is a Symbian^3 smartphone of the Nokia Nseries and Nokia's flagship device of 2010. It was released on 23 September 2010 at the Nokia Online Store before being released in markets around the world on 1 October 2010. The N8 features a 12 megapixel camera, a pentaband 3.5G radio and...
, Nokia E7, Nokia 600, NOKIA 700, NOKIA 701...)- Has ActionScript 3.0 support
Comparison to similar development platforms
Flash Lite is a mobile development platform that can either be used in place of Java ME or run on top of Java ME in a Flash Lite Player. Other platforms include BREW, SymbianSymbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
and Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
. In 2006 Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
announced a partnership with Adobe to bring the Flash Lite player to the BREW runtime.
Flash Lite content may be viewed on handsets installed with the Flash Lite player in the same way that Java content may be viewed on phones with a Java ME runtime. Both of these technologies may be present on the same handset and do not compete directly.
Applications, games and other content may be developed in either technology. Flash Lite has several advantages and several disadvantages when compared to Java ME.
Advantages:
- Rapid development due to the Adobe Flash IDE makes iterative software prototypingSoftware prototyping*Software prototyping, refers to the activity of creating prototypes of software applications, i.e., incomplete versions of the software program being developed...
and software testingSoftware testingSoftware testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...
relatively easy. - Better support for the Write once, run anywhereWrite once, run anywhere"Write once, run anywhere" , or sometimes write once, run everywhere , is a slogan created by Sun Microsystems to illustrate the cross-platform benefits of the Java language. Ideally, this means Java can be developed on any device, compiled into a standard bytecode and be expected to run on any...
(WORA) methodology that does not depend on specific APIs being available. This results in little or no porting, which is a major cost in Java ME development. - Graphics are vector basedVector graphicsVector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
(bitmap support is also included) which allows for scaling, rotation and other transformations without loss of graphic quality. - Ability to pack more animation and graphics into the same file size provided by the use of vector graphics.
- Ability to convert web-based (desktop) Flash content to mobile and vice versa, with minimal effort.
- Flash development skills—understanding of the IDE and of the scripting language—readily ports from the desktop IDE to the mobile development environment.
Disadvantages:
- Some handheld devices don't support Flash Lite, or only an old version of it.
- Vector graphics, which are often used in Flash applications, render slowly due to the complex processing required.
Project Capuchin
On April 30, 2008, Sony EricssonSony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
announced Project Capuchin, a bridge that allows Flash Lite to run as a front-end to Java ME and in this way, combine Java's APIs and direct communication with the mobile phone's hardware (bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
, Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
and others) with Flash's graphical interface.