FlashLite key success factors

I just wanted to show another point of view on  FlashLite' s future.
On TomSoft blog I found this post where he tried to analyze what could the key success factor  of FlashLite.
It's a good analysis and I totally agree with the strenghts key success factors :

Good development environment. The Flash authoring tool is a good tool for designer, and allows them to create quickly great animation, very hard to achieve in a non vector graphic based environment.

Good graphical performance: easy development of UI, etc… A Flash Based UI is easy to do, with great features, fun feedback, especially for mobile phone. I usually do not like Flash based UI on the web, as designer tends to recreate their own metaphor, but one the mobile, there is still a lot of room for UI creativity.

Proprietary technology. That’s the good side of being proprietary: you can do what you want, include feature without asking the community, making mistake, solve them, choose to support something, etc… very quickly. But there is a downside!

I'd add the following points :

• FL development does not imply doing lots of testing on target devices
• OOP with Actionscript 2 support
• No fragmentation
• SVG Tiny compatibility
• FL 2.0 supports video device capabilities (you can play/stream 3gp files)
• consistent runtime across profiles
• in my opinions FlashLite is not a designer technology (maybe it is in Asia, where FL is used for ringtones, animated wallpapers ..)
• in some phones you can update the player just updating the firmware (Nokia phones)

Read the full "Analysis of FlashLite" post.

Comments

[Allysson Lucca]

Ciao Alessandro,

Few months ago, I sent and email to FlashLite NG, where I tried to inquire; why we're seeing a lot of cool applications built in FlashLite, but really bad as UI?
I agree with Tom, that FlashLite applications can be a good "place" to explore new graphics, animated or not.
I must agree with Tom, again, when he says: "FlashLite is not a designer technology.." Also Flash is not a designer tecnhology, it depends in my opinion of what you're developing and specific tools you're using.

[Thomas Landspurg]

Carlo,

I disagree with most of these points (replied on my blog ).
However, one additonnal question to FlashLite creators. I am still puzzled by the fragmentation . When I look to the comtaste website:
http://www.comtaste.com/en/flashlite/edit/download_flashlite.htm

I see 5 different versions, mostly for different S60 phones...What is the reason behind this?

[Marco Casario]

Hi Allyson,
are you speaking with me (Marco) or Alessandro ?;)

[Marco Casario]

Hi Thomas,
my name is Marco not Carlo ;))
Anyway, you saw different SIS files on Comtaste site just because we used the SWF2SIS application to convert the swf in a SIS format (recently I knew that I can create just one SIS for all Series 60); but we create just ONE swf file !

The fragmentation is reduced with Flash Lite because if you want to distribute your contents to different phone models you will have not change your code but just some UI items, due to the different screen size.

With J2ME in order to port an application from a model to another you have to make a hard work !

[Thomas Landspurg]

Sorry Marco for the mistake in the name!

About fragmentation and differences into phones, I think that it's the same kind of work with J2ME fragmentation. It's not usually big deal, but as there are numerous phones, this make a loooot of works. And I assume that it will be the case with mose of the technology, especally because there is innovation.
With Flash(Lite) and J2ME or others will suffer of the same problem: as soon as a techno is standard, then the next innovation came and create some fragmentation.
That's where comes many issue. Some phones have this capacities, others don't, some have older version of a techno (ex: FlashLite1.1) and still needs to be supported, etc....
Now regarding this specific example (UI), I am worried. That's the area where for me Flash was much better than J2ME, allowing clean UI in various size without much effort and the same swf file.

[Allysson Lucca]

Scusami Marco :) ahahaha

I was speaking with you, sorry about this.

Allysson