| Windows Mobile to get "desktop" Flash player? |
Nov. 17, 2008
 A no-holds-barrred, desktop-class implementation of Adobe's Flash Player 10 will be available for Windows Mobile by the second half of 2009. At least, that's the clear implication of an announcement made today by Adobe at a conference in San Francisco.
While the announcement didn't reference Windows by name, Adobe and ARM say they will collaborate to adapt Flash Player 10 for ARM-powered devices, ranging from mobile phones to set-top boxes, MIDs (mobile Internet devices), televisions, automotive platforms, PMPs (personal media players), and other devices. The "joint technology optimization is expected to be available in the second half of 2009," according to the companies.
Infamously, Apple head honcho Steve Jobs has reportedly nixed release of Adobe Flash on the iPhone because the software runs too slowly. Whether or not it ever comes to the iPhone, Flash is apparently too demanding to run on every Windows Mobile device. But, according to Adobe and ARM, the full "desktop" version of Flash will be able to run on devices that use ARM11 or Cortex-A series of processor cores.
The ARM collaboration stems from the Open Screen Project, which was announced this Spring with a charter of delivering a consistent runtime environment across multiple devices using Adobe Flash Player, and eventually, Adobe AIR, says Adobe. The project aims to remove restrictions on Flash file formats, open Flash server protocols, and give away the player free along with the APIs needed to port it to new devices. Although desktop versions of Flash Player have been free, device makers have previously paid license fees.
At its MAX 2008 conference, which opened today in San Francisco, Adobe is rumored to be showing off an early version of its ARM Flash Player using an unspecified Windows Mobile device. While we couldn't confirm this, statements by Adobe partners made clear that Windows Mobile will be a key platform for the software.
Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business, said, "Nvidia is working with ARM and Adobe to ensure Adobe Flash technology takes full advantage of Nvidia Tegra computer-on-a-chip solutions." A key supporter of Windows Mobile, Nividia announced the ARM11-based, 600MHz Tegra APX2500 in February, following up in June with the 700MHz Tegra 600 and 800MHz Tegra 650, the latter touted as supporting display resolutions up to 1680 x 1050.
Touting its ARM products as offering a "desktop-class user experience," Nvidia says they are up to 10 times more power efficient than x86-compatible CPUs. The Tegra processors run Windows CE and Windows Mobile natively on ARM11 cores, and also include Nvidia's ultra-low power GeForce GPU (graphics processing unit), with Direct 3D Mobile graphics compatibility and 2D graphics acceleration. Nvidia has already released a Tegra MID (mobile internet device) development platform (below), which runs Windows Mobile and features an HDMI port for video output.
 
Nvidia's APX 2500 development platform
(Click either view to enlarge)
Meanwhile, the Cortex-A8, first announced in October 2005, has a superscalar architecture theoretically capable of dispatching two to three times more instructions per cycle than ARM11, while power consumption is no greater, claims ARM. For further details, see our earlier coverage, here.
Putting Flash on a diet
For smartphones that don't have such brawny processors, Adobe will apparently continue to offer Flash Lite, a simplified version of Flash that is claimed to let devices play back Adobe's .FLV and .SWF formats and to "replicate the desktop experience." As its name implies, Flash Lite makes fewer memory and processing speed demands, and is capable of running on 200MHz ARM9 processors, according to Adobe.
Flash Lite has reportedly been criticized by some web developers, who complain that it can be hard for websites to tell what version of Flash an end user has. However, the software has shipped on more than 800 million devices, and has been licensed for Windows Mobile web browsers such as Opera Software's Opera Mobile 9.5.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Mobile 6
(Click image for further information) |
Most recently, Flash Lite was licensed by Microsoft itself, for inclusion in the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (right). For more details, see our earlier coverage, here.
Meanwhile, another way of running the full "desktop" edition of Flash on Windows Mobile devices has been offered by Skyfire Labs, with its Skyfire web browser. The browser is said to render pages exactly as they would appear on a desktop computer, with all the expected content, including embedded Flash movies and other multimedia. The key is pre-rendering proxy servers hosted by Skyfire Labs, which do the "heavy lifting" of error correction, document object modeling, and page rendering -- then send the results to a phone as images.
Other MAX 2008 announcements
Also announced by Adobe at its MAX 2008 conference was a 64-bit version of Flash 10, which was first released last month in 32-bit versions. The new alpha version arrives first for Linux, because "that's where we've heard the outcry the loudest," Adobe GM/VP (Platform Business) David Wadhwani was quoted as saying in a story on today's announcements in our sister publication, eWEEK.
Similar to the 32-bit version, the 64-bit Flash Player supports new features and capabilities available in Create Suite 4, Adobe's content creation toolset for online developers. Touted improvements include "easy-to-use" 2D and 3D animation effects, new expressive features and visual performance improvements, and custom filters, blend modes, and fills.
Further announcements today included:- Adobe AIR 1.5 -- Used for developing rich Internet applications (RIAs) outside the browser, AIR has been upgraded with the open source WebKit HTML engine. Available for Windows and Macintosh desktop computers, AIR 1.5 is said to offer the "SquirrelFish" WebKit JavaScript interpreter for claimed acceleration of application performance. Other touted new features include an encrypted database.
- Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 and Adobe Flash media Streaming Server 3.5 -- The new 3.5 versions of Adobe's media server products support Red Hat Linux, as well as Windows. New features for the $4,500 Interactive Server and $1,000 Streaming Server are said to include dynamic streaming, the ability to pause and seek within a live stream, "enhanced" H.264 video, and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support. The 1.5 releases are expected in early 2009.
- Adobe Flash Catalyst -- Adobe previewed this Eclipse-based professional interaction design tool, which had been code-named "Thermo." Flash Catalyst is said to help rapidly create "application interfaces and interactive content without coding," as well as enable images created in Adobe Creative Suite 4 to be imported and converted into UI components. Catalyst should arrive in beta in early 2009.
- Adobe Flex Builder 3.0 -- Adobe previewed its new "Gumbo" version of this development toolkit for the company's "Flex 3" cross platform, open source framework for creating RIAs. The new version is said to offer enhancements to the core IDE (integrated development environment), debugger, and editor, as well as provide new code profiling components and support for Catalyst.
- "Cocomo" Platform-as-a-Service -- Adobe will preview "Cocomo," which it says will help Flex developers more easily "add real-time social capabilities into RIAs via cloud computing."
- Collaboration with SAP AG -- The partnership intends to help SAP NetWeaver developers to use Adobe Flash and Flex components with the Web Dynpro environment, says Adobe.
- Qualcomm BREW support -- Qualcomm announced it was making the Adobe Flash SDK (software development kit) available for its BREW Mobile Platform.
Further information
For further information about the announcements at Adobe's MAX conference, see the coverage on eWEEK.com, here. More on the Open Screen Project may be found here.
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