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

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Mobile and Devices Developer Center - What Would You Change?

We're getting ready to revamp our mobile and devices developer center to make it more accessible and relevant and I wanted to ask those of you who use the site what you would change? Do you want more articles, sample files, easier navigation, frequency of updates - let us know.

Leave your comments and we'll be sure to add them to our list.

Labels: misc

20 comments

I'd like to see the following:
1. More info on Flash Lite 2 for iriver clix (I'm having a hell of a time getting it to read local XML!)

2. Clarification of the various versions of Windows for different devices, and the versions of Flash that work with each.

3. Some type of database-driven lookup tool where user enters a device and gets back the version of Flash pre-installed on that device, if any.

4. Information about interacting with the host device - e.g. placing phone calls, accessing local media, interacting with GPS, etc.

5. More components!

6. Explanation of FlashCast and Brew from a developer's perspective.

By Mike K , at Sun Jul 16, 06:48:00 PM PDT

My list would be:

1. Articles on designing user experience for mobile devices.

2. Best practices and case studies of Flash Lite (and even non-Flash Lite) mobile projects.

3. Mike K's #4

That's it for now. I'm sure more will come to mind throughout the day.

By Bryan Rieger , at Mon Jul 17, 07:12:00 AM PDT

The current mobile center is very confusing when it comes to looking up devices. If there is a device - Flash Lite matrix set up (instead of just a plain list), it would help the developers a lot. Upon choosing the product, it would be helpful to provide details such as screen resolution, Flash Lite version installed or supported, carriers and more.

By Tangent , at Mon Jul 17, 07:18:00 AM PDT

What you really need from my perspective is a top 5 list of best devices (in order), for the US market.

You go out of your way to list every device to make Flash Lite look as ubiquitous as possible, but in reality it's just a confusing soup of devices, most of which are unusable by most developers, either because they are underpowered, or unavailable due to geography or lack of carriers.

Best of all would be a partnership with Nokia (or whoever) and a leading carrier to give Flash developers an early crack at the best devices.

By Michael Tuminello , at Mon Jul 17, 01:23:00 PM PDT

1. The device capabilities query system is top on my list of things I would like to see. I can picture this as a RIA. I think it was even proposed at one point ...

2. One or two additional blog feeds from other folks on the mobile team (perhaps even from the engineering side of things)?

3. Follow through on some CDKs (personally I'd like to see a PSP CDK, but for other devices as well, iriver clix, e10, or even the u10).

4. Is there a newsgroup for PSP development? Create one, it'll only a take a few minutes of someone's time. Also PSP dev center page with some useful content.

Those are just off the top of my head.

By Scott Janousek , at Mon Jul 17, 08:52:00 PM PDT

Would Adobe consider publishing their list of supported devices as geo based rss, this would help anyone trying to sell flashlite content to tell consumers if their phones are flashlite enabled, also if they have it pre installed? On your dev center, it would be nice to be able to filter out flashlite 1.1 or 2.0/2.1 content. Do you have a specific newsletter/alert system or do you reply on devnet? And more examples are always really good.

cheers

MaTT

By matt , at Tue Jul 18, 03:42:00 AM PDT

I think the MaD Dev Center does a pretty good job and has been improving a lot lately, but I also agree with what Scott has pointed out.

By Luciano Ayres , at Wed Jul 19, 04:46:00 AM PDT

I am looking for a phone with camera, bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Flash Lite 2.0 Does such a beast exist?
I guess the major problem is how few devices are flash 2.0 enabled in North America (canada in my case). I am not sure revamping the website would do much since it seems to me that the reality is that only 11 devices, all of them Nokia's, are available. The more up-to-date and clear information on the new site, the better!

By Anonymous , at Wed Jul 19, 09:58:00 AM PDT

I would like to see a performance bench mark test for all the enabled phones, especially for SE phones as they dont currently work that well and in my experience the emulator doesnt always give a true measure of performance (is that because I'm on a Mac? lol) could Adobe state the OS of the phones - its clear with Nokia, but not so easy with SE for example.
Also the BIGGEST question all clients ask for are stats of how many phones are out there, they are NOT interested in 45m - 65M licences or devices sold globally etc so regional figures would be really usefull - thats probably too much to ask for tho!!
Cheers, Keep up the good work!

By Alistair Gillan , at Thu Jul 20, 01:01:00 AM PDT

1) I think it would be helpful to have a news feed for any updates to the mobile dev center. There are times when I do not visit for awhile, just assuming there is no update, then come back after a month and find several new updates that I missed. A news feed that is also aggregated by the Macromedia XML News Aggregator for Flash mobile category would be great for us to keep up. Even small updates like "added info about phone X" will be quite useful to someone. It also makes things seem to be moving forward at a steady pace instead of getting a bunch of stuff in one shot (future shock!), then nothing for a long period of time. Most other OEM mobile developer related sites, that I read, have a steady stream of small news items througout each week.

2) I find it frustrating that products come out supporting flash but there is no official corresponding CDK for them. iriver products and PSP are two examples of this. It appears as though Adobe does not care to accomodate developers with regards to these devices, but at the same time hypes these as breakthrough licensing deals. I see a different message to developers than to potential licensees. This inconsistency does not give me confidence to develop content for a device.

3) Its been my experience working as a moderator at FlashKit and also maintaining my own community site, sonify.org, that it is not helpful to have inactive discussion forums. This does not look good from a developer point of view. Half of the forums (FlashCast, SE, Samsung and Japan) are not active at all, and may not be necessary. Why do you have all those forums if no one is using them? Perhaps Adobe needs to do more to actively build these communites.

Hayden Porter

By Anonymous , at Thu Jul 20, 01:56:00 PM PDT

one other suggestion...

Interviews with representatives from OEM that have licensed Flash explaining their view of the role and value of the Flash as it relates to their device/platform.

Interviews with mobile content provider/aggregators on how they see the Flash mobile content business evovling with suggestions to developers for what they (aggregators) think the potential applications for flash mobile are.

Hayden

By Anonymous , at Thu Jul 20, 02:17:00 PM PDT

I agree with hayden on the phone maunfacturers and operators, SE have many phones with flashlite on them but SE do nothing to promote it or do anything to add FL content, as for the operators, I had a meeting with UK operator "Three" and they very frosty towards flashlite content and vodaphone UK arent much better. :-(

By Alistair Gillan , at Fri Jul 21, 01:08:00 AM PDT

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

By genbrews , at Fri Jul 21, 04:06:00 AM PDT

Thanks everyone for your comments - great stuff. We'll look at incorporating your feedback and should have something new available within the next few months for you to start using.

best,
Bill

By Bill , at Sun Jul 23, 04:19:00 PM PDT

Suggested feature - Operator SDK
It would be great to see what is possible by using Flash Lite as a presentation layer for operator applications that reside on the device.

By Anonymous , at Wed Jul 26, 09:58:00 PM PDT

updated info on supported devices

By Anonymous , at Thu Jul 27, 01:13:00 PM PDT

Can we add a simple contact page or email address for bugs? etc? to each page of the mobile center?

I often want to report things, but sometimes I just end up emailing you folks (which is probably annoying).

By Scott Janousek , at Fri Jul 28, 07:14:00 AM PDT

Can the team add README notes to the mobile device profile updates?

I just came into a scenario where a content type changed on a device, yet I was unaware because updates only say: "minor changes applied".

Would be nice to copy a simple readme file over with the .MXP file.

I might blog about this. It's important.

When we have more devices, it'll be a nightmare for developers if it's not documented ... and device manufacturers decide to change their supported content types ...

I'd much rather see, a buglist for a template than not know what was changed and why.

By Scott Janousek , at Fri Jul 28, 07:25:00 AM PDT

how about giving some word on the nokia s60 challenge contest. we'd like to know what people did..

By Anonymous , at Mon Aug 07, 03:24:00 PM PDT

Add a section for the PSP. Right now there is one for Pocket PC, one for flash lite, but nothing for the PSP.

By Anonymous , at Fri Aug 25, 11:17:00 AM PDT