Flash Lite was originally developed by Macromedia™ (now Adobe®) to run Flash based content on the latest generation of mobile phones and other small devices. It first appeared as Macromedia™ Flash Lite™ 1.0 in 2003 aimed at the Japanese NTT DoCoMo i-mode system. Flash Lite 1.1 followed in 2004, and contained a number of major improvements, allowing better network access and integration with the phone. Both Flash Lite 1.0 and 1.1 are based on a Flash 4 structure, helping to minimize the footprint and processor demands of the player.

Most Flash Lite enabled Sony Ericsson phones come equipped with Flash Lite 1.1 as a browser plugin and some phones also allow Flash Lite animations to be set as screensavers or wallpapers (see Sony Ericsson Developer World for more details of phone capabilities).

Developing Flash Lite resources for mobile phones presents a number of unique challenges for developers more used to creating Flash assets for the web. The first and most obvious of these is the difference in the physical size of the display on a mobile device as opposed to a desktop machine. Generally this means designing for an area roughly half the size of a standard business card and, more often than not, portrait as opposed to landscape.

At this stage it is important to look at the resolution of the display, as this will have a major impact on the way our animation plays. Until recently the majority of Flash enabled Sony Ericsson phones had a 176 x 220 pixel display. Many of the newer phones, such as the W850i and the W880i, have QVGA displays with a size of 240 x 320 pixels. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in the rendering quality for graphics with far better clarity for vector graphics and fonts. Catering for both of these sizes will require some additional planning on the behalf of the developer. In short, know what devices you are aiming to deploy your content to before you start production.

The browser based implementation found on Sony Ericsson phones can be prone to low frame rates, often down to 7 frames per second, making the use of efficient graphics and animation styles essential in producing professional content.

Within this article the role that Adobe Device Central can play in the effective creation and management of Flash Lite projects will be mentioned. This is not intended to be a tutorial on Device Central, but it does represent an invaluable tool for the Flash Lite developer since it allows better coordination of resources created in different authoring environments, for example, Adobe® Photoshop® and Flash, as well as accurate emulation for a range of devices. While final testing on actual devices should always be part of your production schedule, Device Central allows us to take the guesswork out of development by giving…

Download