Flash Devices - Adobe Flash Development Resource for Non-PC Devices

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Interested in a Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC?

When I first started developing mobile Flash content it was with the developers release of Flash Player 4 for Pocket PC back in 2001. Since then Macromedia has released a version 5 and currently a version 6 of the Pocket PC Player and there has been an increase in the developer community for creating or porting Flash applications to the Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) platform.

So I have a question for those of you who currently are using version 6 of the Pocket PC Player, would you be interested in a version 7 of the Pocket PC Player? If so, leave a comment of how you would use the features of version 7 in your applications.

I want to clarify that a version 7 of the Pocket PC Player is not available today; we're trying to find more information from the developer community.

Labels: flash player, windows mobile

43 comments

We currently use the stand-alone player for PPC applications. Version 7 would be great to start playing FLV files within the Flash applications instead of forcing users out of the application to play videos in WM player.

This way, the experience would in line with those of the computer version and FlashLite 2.

Another big plus, if version 7 could address it, is resolving pixel-doubling issues on screens with VGA resolution. Nothing we have tried allowed us to match the quality of apps on QVGA screens.

By Anonymous , at Wed Feb 01, 12:09:00 PM PST

Mine is not a commercial interest. I use an old pocket pc as the hub of my home automation. I use it to change the songs that are playing and the lights that are on. I would love to use cf flash forms to make this a more dynamic experience, but without flash 7 support this can not happen.

I would love to see flash 7 on pocket pc!

By Simeon , at Wed Feb 01, 12:17:00 PM PST

That will be great if Pocket PC and Flash Lite 2 are up on the same version, which allows developers to write more reusable code.

I am currently developing a multi-player game that I am seriously considering porting it to PPC/Flash Lite 2. Having FP7 for PPC would allow me to leverage all the features in AS2 including exception handlings and such.

By Tangent , at Wed Feb 01, 12:56:00 PM PST

The flashlite and Flash on PPC or WinMobile devices should be same. this will help developers to develop Flash apps for multiple devices in less time.

// chall3ng3r //

By chall3ng3r , at Wed Feb 01, 01:09:00 PM PST

I work for a major real estate company in FL. I would love to be able to use PPC 7 and Flash Lite to write apps for mobiles.

Our agents have many types of phones and PDAs. I can't move forward until a large majority have phones I can develop to.

There are many that have Black Berries. I doubt that Flash of any flavor will make it to them. If that could happen, though, it would be great.

So it seems the Nokias and WM phones will be the likely phones I can develop to. If FL 2 and PPC 7 became available to enough of these phones, I think I could present a case to start writing apps for them.

Please make it happen!

By orgreeno , at Wed Feb 01, 01:49:00 PM PST

I'd most definitely like to see a Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC. After prototyping Flash 6-based PPC client devices for multiuser settings and seeing their potential to talk to FCS "way back in 2003", I feel as if the arrival of Flash 7 and AS2 on the PPC are overdue.

By Ironklad , at Wed Feb 01, 03:10:00 PM PST

Certainly yes and compatible with FL2, simpler developing..

By fandango , at Wed Feb 01, 10:32:00 PM PST

Fantastic. I was getting worried that support for the pocket pc was on the ropes. We are using Flash based educational software on Pocket PCs. It is the perfect mobile lab.

By marc , at Wed Feb 01, 11:32:00 PM PST

Where I work we make make few PPC apps as point of sale marketing tools that sales reps can use at trade shows and the like to show information to potential clients. Think, colour configurators for new cars. Stuff like that.

However, the really big benefit for us with F7 on PPC and FL2 on mobiles will be AS2. This will enable all our mobile development to get in line with our web development, leveraging existing code libraries and practices.

By Anonymous , at Thu Feb 02, 01:25:00 AM PST

One of the features which is not supported in FLP 6.0 (available in ver. 7.0+) is "Error Class Object".
That is another reason why I prefer to use ver. 7.0 instead of 6.0 adding all the reasons other guys have already said for developing for Flash 7.0.

By Pouya P. , at Thu Feb 02, 01:42:00 AM PST

There are a lot of features that can be useful in the developing in PPCs.

- FLV Video
- AS2 implementation with classes
- Powerful components
- Full integration with the web pages that are on the net
- Faster Flash Player

A very big community are waiting to make the jump to Flash Player 7.

By Raul Jimenez , at Thu Feb 02, 02:24:00 AM PST

I would definately be interested, but the main changes I would like to see from Flash 6 PPC are:

* Better garbage collection for freeing memory quicker
* Lower memory footprint
* Better performance so animations run much faster with less CPU impact
* Hostable from outside PIE in a supported way
* Less impact on device CPU and background tasks

I have commercial products based upon the Flash PPC player so this is very important to me.

Steddyman

By Steddyman , at Thu Feb 02, 03:29:00 AM PST

I'm agree with all of you.

Only the posibility to develop with AS2 is enough to make FP7 PPC a reality.

Others characteristics like FLV videos are important in this kind of devices, and with Flash Lite 2 is necessary to develop reusable applications.

By Marcos , at Thu Feb 02, 04:13:00 AM PST

A Standalone player would be a must as well. Being forced to use it within PIE would be a killer...

I've pocket pc flash players since the unofficial port of a flash 3 linux player to the pocket pc. Mostly for personal use (as a quick way to show some of my work to a prospective client or employer), but more as of late for work (I've build 2 multimedia tours for some well known museums). The ID3 tag handling capability in Flash Player 7 would have been a major help...the flv stuff is nice too.

By Cody Tolmasoff , at Thu Feb 02, 10:25:00 AM PST

For me the same as Raul Jimenez:

- FLV Video
- AS2 implementation with classes
- Powerful components
- Full integration with the web pages that are on the net
- Faster Flash Player

By Oscar de Lathouder , at Thu Feb 02, 11:46:00 PM PST

We are using flash in multimedia Installations. With flash 7 on the pocket pc we could administer and diagnose everything using a pocket pc with WLAN.

By julio , at Fri Feb 03, 04:36:00 AM PST

a Fp7 with FCS connection support would be AWESOME.

By Anonymous , at Fri Feb 03, 06:25:00 AM PST

We use flash to control A/V devices. With Flash 6 we can only talk to one IP device at a time due to cross domain scripting. In Flash 7, I can easily add a crossdomain.xml file to solve the problem, but in flash 6 it requires a dirty hack of loading external movieclips.

If you make flash 7 for ppc, please make sure it supports crossdomain.xml as well as the data components that come with Flash MX 2004 Professional such as the datagrid.

By Vince , at Fri Feb 03, 02:55:00 PM PST

Everything has been said already..
- AS2.0, new FP7 classes and enhancements, components, flv...
well, an upgrade is always great, isn't it? :)

By Joan Garnet , at Sun Feb 05, 02:00:00 AM PST

Yes please!

Flash7 support with Actionscript2 would be so very useful.

Would especially like:
- a faster Flash player (especially actionscript code)
- support for "simple" features like MovieClipLoader
- additional hosting facilities - including control over memory and processor usage and including the ability to host multiple flash movies simultaneously

Any hints about when one might be available?

By Anonymous , at Sun Feb 05, 09:32:00 AM PST

I'd love to be able to convert some of my webservice apps to pocket pc utilising the AS2 functionality.

By Anonymous , at Sun Feb 05, 07:36:00 PM PST

Full support for Flash Remoting would be very convenient as well!

By Lathoudero , at Sun Feb 05, 11:27:00 PM PST

I was very interested in Version 7 for PPC to start deploying Flex apps on PPC, but now with Flex 2 I have to say that we need Flash Player 8.5 on PPC

By Anonymous , at Tue Feb 07, 01:15:00 AM PST

I'm working alot with prototypes on all kinds of diffrent handhelds and would realy love to see FlashLite 2 to be ported to Pocket Pc rather then the normal player 7. Makes more sense for me att least to have the same player on all handhelds. The functions in FlashLite 2 that I mostly like to see on my ppc is the ability to load from and save to external files.

By Magnus Wallon , at Tue Feb 07, 02:14:00 PM PST

I'm interested in using Flash Player for Pocket PC to develop
handheld tours for museums and galleries. For this the ability to stream FLVs is almost essential and the addition of AS2 turns the project from a pain in the neck to a serious contender.
For this application the player needs to run standalone without a browser. It would also be useful to be able to get out of the sandbox to run file system commands and access things like the IR receiver on the device

By Joe Cutting , at Wed Feb 08, 01:51:00 AM PST

I agree with nearly all of the arguments mentioned. Especially

- Faster FP!
- FLV Video w/o Flash Communication Server

would be great. But, I've to tell you that I'm already quite satisfied with PPC FP6. Hope that nobody from this thread spams me now. :-)

If it's a matter of resources and priorities for Adobe, I would rather see even stronger focus on FL. FL 2 already rocks. Maybe I would like additional support for XML sockets/remoting and better access to Symbian core libraries.

I'm currently in discussion with some major game companies and providers here in Europe to develop several very innovative and exceptional games and apps. I would very much like to use FL for the interface instead of Java or C++. I just might have some problems convincing companies to go for FL in the end, because of the distribution model of FL. This is really an issue for them and me. Being able to bundle the player with the apps would definitely help to develop and actually distribute VERY exciting commercial FL content to the masses showing off FL capabilities and setting a major trend into this direction.

Bill, it would be great (!) if you could get back to me about this subject by mail: contact (at) bionicarts.de
Thx.

By Christian Halbach , at Wed Feb 08, 03:12:00 AM PST

I agree with porting FL 2.0 to PocketPC. A Flash Player for Pocket PC which is not the normal Flash Player for PC but also not Flash Lite is very confusing to explain the clients.

By Anonymous , at Thu Feb 09, 07:00:00 AM PST

so ok sure, but go directly to 8.5 (or at least 8, 7 is boring already...)
a PPC is far more powerful than a little phone. it would be sad having to be limited with a flashlite of some sort.

plus we need an easier way to embed swfs in PPC .NET forms, like the desktop version... direct activex communication... but maybe that's a microsoft issue, more than an adobe one...

By Raz-L , at Thu Feb 09, 02:26:00 PM PST

FP7 for PPC would be great, if it would be based on at least Flash Player 7 with AS 2.0 support just like Flash Lite 2.0. It would make lot's of sense for deploying Flash applications to Mobile Device, PPC and PC. It would save developers lot's of time. Also if FL 3.0 will have FP8 features (like flash video), then it would be great if FP8 for PPC would be also released when FL3. Having great features on PC flash player only is not everything. We need them also on mobile devices! Even though I understand that many of these features require greater computing power than today's mobile devices offer...

By SplOiT , at Sun Feb 12, 03:12:00 PM PST

Why NOT to release FP7 for PPC? It's already a base line for developers and content creators. The less variety of Flash player versions - the better. Flash platform would win if Flash player is within 1-2 versions from each other on Destop/Web, PDAs and Cell Phones.

By Sasha , at Sun Feb 12, 09:11:00 PM PST

YES!!! As mentioned, AS2 and FLV would be a huge boost--from a convergence standpoint, it would also help increase the pervasiveness of FLV video, and free devs from having to use windoze media...

On a related tangent, OGG support would be a great option, in order to take advantage of its superior compression to increase storage on the limited storage capacity of handhelds.

By D.Witt , at Tue Feb 14, 05:08:00 PM PST

- video capabilities
- faster player
- xml power!
- Classes - OOP dev.

Oh yes please!!!

By Daniel Aguilar , at Tue Feb 21, 02:49:00 AM PST

does somebody know if it is possible to use loadMovie for Pocket pc in a standalone flash application? using mdm or any other converter?

By Anonymous , at Sun Feb 26, 01:49:00 PM PST

FP7 and Flash Lite should be the same.
FP7 -> img tag, CSS

Please don't restrict external data or swf loading.

Thanks

By Anonymous , at Tue Feb 28, 02:55:00 PM PST

The most urgent things for us are CSS support (which I'm sure is 7) and better HTML text rendering - at least bold and italic (which I'm not completely sure is fixed in 7).

Other than that, many small things like MovieClipLoader would be great to have.

By Anonymous , at Thu Mar 02, 07:10:00 AM PST

From France, we'are voting definitively YES for FP7 on PPC !

By Anonymous , at Thu Mar 09, 05:15:00 AM PST

The ActionScript 2 support is the most important feature of Flash Player 7, and now Flash Lite 2.0. Most of the PocketPC platforms have most of the features of a mobile phone, providing it the same features seams an evidence...

By LAlex , at Thu Mar 09, 08:35:00 AM PST

External API access!

Oh boy...I would absolutely love to use one UI system for Desktop, Web, and PPC... But it does need to talk to backend local resources on PPC and Desktop.

In Winforms, its trivial to embed the control in a C# winform, and use the new 8 features to get to backend databases, files, launch, etc.(thank you! thank you! Finally! :-)

On the web, there is no need to, since webservicing solves that...

but on the pocketPC...we're currently flat out of luck. The plugin can't be embedded in a compact WinForm, since NetCE plugin is not COM enabled and VS cannot automatically create a wrapper for it... There are players (Zinc, et al) but they are full exe's...not controls that can be embedded...

So: yes...
* identical AS as desktop,
* v.8 external api access
* v2 component architecture.

PS: If anyone knows how this could be achieved, oh, please!, please!:
suggestions[at]xact-solutions{d.t}com -- thank you!)

PPS:
PPC's will have the space...don't hold us back from working for 2 years to save 200k. Please!

By Anonymous , at Thu Mar 16, 04:17:00 AM PST

There are some web sites that I use for my business that require a flash player. I would simply like to be able to use those sites. I have a Treo 700w that runs Windows Mobile 5.0 which doesn't support Flash currently.

By Anonymous , at Tue Mar 28, 03:07:00 AM PST

does the nokia 5300 support flv files? if it does can you please let me know by email, send it to bilalmussa@yahoo.co.uk

By Bilal , at Thu Dec 21, 11:25:00 AM PST

No, the Nokia 5300 does not support FLV files.

By Bill , at Thu Dec 21, 04:57:00 PM PST

i'd like to know. on certain websites , fro instances "youtube" it requires me to get the latest version of ADOBE FLASH PLAYER. or i think windows media 10. i have a t-mobile dash. is FLASH PLAYER 7 going to be able to play once i download it to my phone.( i also upgraded my software to WM6).
thank you in advance

By jean-pierre , at Sat Nov 17, 01:00:00 PM PST

By jean-pierre , at Sat Nov 17, 01:01:00 PM PST