Earlier this week, I attended an online webinar hosted by Forum Nokia and Adobe and learnt in depth about the new opportunities that will soon to be available for Flash mobile developers with the release of the Nokia Platform Services API.
Adobe’s presentation by Peter did a fine job of describing the features and workflow within Adobe Flash and Device Central CS4 with demos from their partners (coincidently the CS4 Design/Web/Production launch event in Mumbai happened on the same day, with no discussion on mobile designing/development 🙁 ).
But the most interesting part of the webinar was Nokia’s presentation of their newly announced Platform Services API for Flash Lite technology. This Platform Services API was introduced with the S60 5th Edition platform, and the first device to support it will be the eagerly awaited 5800 XpressMusic.
Nokia mobile services such as the Application Manager, Calendar, Contacts, Landmarks, Location, Logging, SMS/MMS Messaging, Media Gallery, Sensors and System Information will now be enabled from within Flash Lite using the new set of APIs. These will definitely extend Flash Lite capabilities on devices and stimulate more ideas and flexibility in the creation of mobile content. And finally, these will be accessed directly from ActionScript with no dependencies on other programming languages.
There are various resources available to follow up on for this platform and API –
- Webinar Recording – Flash Lite Development with Adobe CS4 and Nokia Platform Services API
- Continue the Webinar Conversation with questions about Adobe Flash Lite and the Nokia Platform Service API
- Whitepaper – S60 5th Edition What’s new for developers
- Whitepaper – Creating Location-Aware Applications
- Adobe MAX NA sessions on Nokia Mobile Browser, Flash and Flash Lite Experience and Hands-On Flash Lite Programming for Nokia Devices
Mariam
hi Mariam
i m a flash lover working with multimedia and flash around 4 years. if i pursue mobile/device contents and games where i can find myself after 2 yrs.Your suggestions would be highly appreciable. 🙂
thanks
Hi Bhuwan,
Glad to know another equally passionate flash developer 🙂
Well, till sometime back it had been a little slow getting opportunities with Flash Lite. But in the coming months there will be a lot more happening with Flash on mobiles, especially with the coming MAX conference where there would be still more announcements made with the Open Screen Project. Then there is the Nokia Platform Services APIs, Project Capuchin from Sony Ericsson and the BREW Mobile Platform. All of these would open up avenues for developers to create content and monetize from them.
I would therefore say that the time is definitely good to start looking at Flash Lite. Since you have already been developing Flash content, learning Flash Lite would not be difficult. Once you are proficient with that, you can start looking at the different platform extensions for building and sharing content.
And finally, what you do with all the tools and opportunities you get, entirely depends upon you. Because it would be you who would be deciding how and where you would be 2 years down the line 🙂
Hope this helps.
Mariam