Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension

This is just a summary (and a reminder for me) about the Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension ripped from the Adobe's Flash Lite 2 on BREW presentation at BREW 2006 Conference.

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension : Basic Functionality

• Playing back SWF content
• Rendering graphics and images
• Bitmap (BMP)
• JPEG, PNG and other device supported formats
• Rendering fonts/text
• Device font
• Anti-aliased font
• Pixel/Raster font
• Process and executes ActionScript (ECMA-262 standard based script like Java Script)
• Playback animations
• Can natively render onto the screen supporting various bit depths (like 8 bit palette mode, RGB 4, RGB 555, RGB 565, RGB 666, RGB888 etc.)
• Flexible rendering quality: Low, high, medium (most suitable for mobile devices)
• Supports suspend, resume of content playback
• Content can be Panned and Zoomed
• Capable of running on both MBCS and UTF16 based devices
• Can render Unicode content/text
• Can render content with or without Full-Screen mode (can be controlled by Action Script)

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension : User Input Events (next page)

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension : User Input Events

• Handles Key Events (Key down, Key, Key up)
• Can support stylus based input
• Flexible event handling: Content author can write custom event handling code
• Player provides default navigation mechanism among the controls on the screen
• Customizable navigation using Action Script
• Provides inline text entry functionalities to the content
• Allows content author to make HTTP/s network requests to the arbitrary HTTP server and stream data to the player
• Content can load other SWFs (via Action Script: loadmovie)
• Content can load data like text data, XML data etc. (via Action Script: loadvariable)
• Can load various types of images and sound data (via loadmovie)
• Action Script can register for network communication events, such as OnConnect, OnLoad
• Example of loadmovie Action Script
• loadmovie (http://www.adobe.com/test/products.swf, _root.dropzone)
• In the above Action Script: there is an invisible movie clip on the stage with the instance name “dropzone”. The “loadmovie”action uses this movie as target parameter to load the “products.swf”
• Can unload movie using “unloadmovie”

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension : Socket Communication

• Permits XML based socket to send and load XML data
• XML messages are sent over a full-duplex TCP/IP stream socket connection
• Each XML message is a complete XML document, terminated by a zero byte
• An unlimited number of XML messages can be sent and received over a single XMLSocket connection
• Has various Action Script event handlers, such as, OnConnect, OnClose, OnData

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension : Security

• Root SWF movie path is the base URL of the content
• Restricts any cross-domain data loading, for example
• If root movie URL is set to http://www.adobe.com
• Doesn’t allow the content author to load additional content from http://www.xyz.com

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension:  Sound Playback
–Two types sound playback mode:
•Event: Audio and animation is not synchronized
–Achieve pseudo synchronization: Can be turned on using Action Script
•Synchronous/Streaming: Audio and animation is synchronized (not possible in the current generation of BREW device due to system limitation)
–Can load/playback various sound formats: like MIDI, SMAF, AAC, AACPlus etc. –Device dependent
–Pause, Resume etc.

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension: Video Playback
–Three modes of video data playback:
•Video data bundled (embedded) in the SWF
•Video data available as a separate file on the device
•Video data streamed in over the network
–“Video”object in the Action Script controls video playback
–Player supports all the video formats supported by the device
–Flash video format and streaming from Flash Media
Server -Not supported

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension:  Shared Object
–Is an Action Script class that allows reading and writing of data to the disk. In desktop player SWF movies can share their data, however in mobile shared object doesn’t allow sharing data between different Flash Movie instances
–For a given main SWF movie shared object size is limited
to 4KB
–Maximum limit of total shared object space is 256KB
–For example, user search string preference

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension:  Device Integration Functionalities:
–Flash Lite BREW extension offers various device specific integration functionalities at the Action Script level
•System.capabilities: Provides device specific capabilities information
•Various time related functionalities: “GetDateDay”, “GetDateMonth”, “GetLocaleLongDate”, “GetLocalShortDate”etc.
•Vibration capability: Dependent on device support
•Can retrieve device specific ISO-639-1 standard language code, and optional ISO-3166 standard country code
•Can access device identifier

Flash Lite 2 BREW Extension: Device Integration:
–Not Supported in BREW 2.x, due to system limitations:
•Battery Level,
•Backlight control,
•Power source information,
•Network connection status,
•Signal level information

–Can Launch arbitrary application like web browser with by specifying URL (dependent upon the target application registering it’s MIME type with BREW) or class ID
–Can send SMS, can initiate phone call, sending email (if any email client is registered with BREW, otherwise sends SMS)
–Has ability to integrate with “VCast”, “MobileShop®”etc.

Comments

[Sajag Bhardwaj]

We have an urgent requirement with our direct client for Embedded Software Engineer located at Kansas City, MO. Please go through it and if you find it interesting, then please reply back with an updated copy of your resume.

Position: Embedded Software Engineer

Location: Kansas City, MO

Duration: 6 months contract (extendable)

Start Date: ASAP

RESPONSIBILITIES/FUNCTIONS:

Client is looking for an Embedded Software Engineer with good experience on Brew platform with C or C++.

Thanks & Regards
**************************************************
Sajag Bhardwaj
Spectraforce Technologies Inc.
609-662-1200
Email: sbhardwaj@spectraforce.com
Visit us: http://www.spectraforce.com

*************************************************

[Brad Ostroth]

BREW Developer needed! Work remotely building GPS apps with C++ on Brew for a major carrier. If intersted, call me or email me...

Brad Ostroth
407-296-4370 x207
Bostroth@thresholdplacement.com