There were some great polished keynotes at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona this week. While they did an awesome job showing off Flash Player 10.1 in the mobile browser, I put together a low-budget video showing some of the stuff that wasn’t shown. Enjoy!
Lee
This blog contains opinions and thoughts that are my own and that are not necessarily shared by the company that I work for. Adobe allows its employees to share their opinions publicly through the use of blogs, Twitter, and other forms of social media.
© 2010 Lee Brimelow
nice work Lee.
All seems to run quite well – might have to dump my iphone for a Nexus One…
Listening Apple?
i cant wait for the beta to be released so that we can start creating some awesome stuff. I believe it will open up a whole new avenue for mobile, just launching a game straight from the browser and possibly installing an AIR version.
One question tho Lee, I havent seen any networking demo yet, something to show a bit of data being loaded and displayed. Will be nice to see something like that for business type apps.
well, this looks really nice!
can’t wait to use it on my android
Future belongs to Flash!
First thing i noticed when looking at your demo, how fast nexus one seemes to be compared to (my) iphone.
*drooling a volonté*
I wish I worked for Adobe.
Do you perhaps know if there will be a version in the Adobe prerelease program before first full release? ^^
Hi Lee,
Nice demo! I think I’d like to get the Nexus One if that’s the sort of smooth functionality and playability you get thanks to the Flash Player! Would you recomend it instead of the Iphone? I only ask cos I seem to remember you having one (Iphone)? Because, I’ve been waiting for better or comparable non-Apple touch phone to come on to the market.
Cheers,
Ben
looking forward to getting this one. Thanks for the demo!
Looks good! Would like to see how some heavier flash sites using things like papervision etc perform.
Very nice! Looking forward to 10.1!
Oh yeah
that looks cool (except i had to read the video by hand from the source (on safari 4.0.2 + FPL 10.0.42.34)
lee, will there be a way of publishing a native android app like its done with iphone?
Great stuff
When will I be able to install the beta on my Nexus?
Another Q
Will it support everything from the desktop player, stuff like camera and mic?
That’s awesome Lee. Let the Flash Player 10.1 rule mobile world, finally… Thanks for sharing.
That’s cool. I managed to make it first this time.
now that’s the ultimate browsing experience!
any news on augmented reality on the nexus one?
Ok, now anyone can explain me, WHY THE **** i should buy a ****** iPhone Nano or a giant iPhone (iTablet)? Lee can you explain
Serius i can’t understand.
This is great to see. Our developers are looking forward to developing AIR apps for Android mobiles! Excellent demos.
what? no porn site demos?
great to see that, looking smooth too..
Great video Lee. Apple is so wrong, now.. should i sell my Iphone 3GS and get a Nexus One? mmmmm stuff.
cool!!!!
Nice and smooth!
How are your finding that Nexus in comparison to the iPhone?
That looks a LOT more like the “ultimate browsing experience”, than the one with the blue legos. Excellent!
man – i really need to get out of my iPhone and get Android… and CS5? When is Flash CS5 coming out? I really want to get started developing!
While it is a little off topic, you seem to be able to get your hands on a number of Android devices. Would you be willing to do (or know of any good) an Android device review and tell us what you like about the different options that are out there now (and which ones could be a good testing platform for Flash Player 10.1?)
Great examples, Lee. How about some examples of sites with multiple flash content or ads?
nytimes.com or NickJr.com come to mind. What about Hulu?
Looking good so far. Next stop: Battery life! How hard does this stuff hit the battery?
Puzzle games and streaming video FINALLY on a mobile phone. Thanks Adobe.
Lee,
Thanks for posting the video. Next commercial for Google Nexus One – A free T-Shirt with a giant blue lego with a giant red Ghostbusters symbol ? (red circle with diagonal slash going through it).
I’ve used Apple products (and Adobe products) for years, but the this latest move of Apple trying to suppress Flash is really pretty sickening.
Steve Jobs in the 80′s & 90′:
“Down with the Man”
Steve Jobs in 2010
“I am the Man”
PS. Since the room shades are drawn in the video, can we assume you’ve already tested out the Bang Bros. site?
Ha ha. Sorry… couldn’t resist.
Awesome. Are you going to do an AIR demo?
It’s the result of the Open screen project
great job!
What about battery life implications? How long can you keep activity like that up before you have to re-charge?
Awesome Lee, thanks for sharing. One question, on the Armor game where you drag is that something specifically built with a touch api or is it just assuming you are click-dragging with a mouse?
Very impressive. Far better performance than expected.
What’s up with the double-tap fullscreen thing? it just fires the FullScreenEvent and you set up your own listeners? does the stage dimensions change automatically when reoriented to landscape?
can’t wait to get my hands on this stuff.
I want to trow my both iphones (3g and 3gs) on the trash
my old nokia E51 suport flash at the browser, when the nexus one come to Brazil, I’ll buy one as soon as possible.
As far as I am concerned this demo nails down all and entire bullshit thats been going on for some time…
Awesome job guys and keep it up!
So far iPhone was my all time choice for a smart-phone. Since this new blue lego thing and especially for the not Flash on iPad and since I am a Flash developer by hearth, I just want to get rid of my iPhone and really get a Nexus One.
PS: Talk about video performance on a browser… wow! It can easily match the stand alone youtube application for the iPhone.
Dear Lee, I would like to know how this scenario works:
On YouTube, do not double tap on the player. Drag the scrub bar of the player. What happens in that case? Does the Flash react, or the phone’s screen?
Awesome demo, thank you Lee
It’s already been said so I don’t need to mention that I can’t wait to get a phone that allows me to view this demo…
Sent from my iPhone
after seeing this video… I think I will give my iPhone to my wife
I still have about a year left on my AT&T/iPhone contract, but if Apple hasn’t figure it out yet by then it looks like I’ll be jumping ship. Awesome demos!!
The empire strikes back and will bring apple to their knees! To all those opposed…we *uck you,*at you alive and rule over you:-)
Special thanks to Jonathan Gay for making FLASH and changing the internet from a static dead place into a fun and engaging one.
Flash is coming to the mobile world like a hurricane and i am very happy.
that’s awesome… how’s it affect the performance?
rocksteady,
danno~
battery performance that is.
should’ have clarified that.
rocksteady,
danno~
Umm, was that a woman-on-woman thumbnail I saw?!
i love flash though yes it did crash quite some times on my machine but that doesnt mean html5 or something will never crash.
i love symbian and flash on it works great too !!
Seriously, I think Flash is hurting Steve more than Steve doing damage to a standard(FLASH). That dimwit is pushing a standard that is too far off in the horizon. I know a lot of people, my relatives in the US and here in Asia
who avoid iPhone like a plague because there’s no Flash support. Especially here in Asia, Flash is feeling the love, brother.
Nicely done – i will get one, based on what i just saw. Until then , could you test and tell me if the video play and slide glide within flash works for this page i have: http://ctndigital.com/ctnd/2010/02/portrait-modes/ its a portrait mode of a magazine page extracted into a demo.
oops – this is the flash only embed
http://demo.lookbookhd.com/f8tck.htm
Streams flv — its designed to allow finger scroll with the text column slide up/down controlled within flash alpha transparent overlay above and while playing video. Touch video to pause/play
From what i can read about apple SDK, its not possible to do this on an iphone or ipad. True?
Keep up the great work on this blog – its excellent.
have fun with touch http://www.lookbookhd.com – shown on my HP touchsmart
http://ctndigital.com/ctnd/video/
Quite good, even if I think I can see some frame skipping sometimes.
But that’d be interesting that you install a status bar CPU and Battery (with percentages) monitor so that we can see how much CPU load and battery consumption it uses…
Also that’d be nice to have a frame rate counter (could certainly be done in a debug version of your flash player), to see how well the frame rate really is.
You keep saying that there is a very nice frame rate, but my eyes tell me that it’s not as nice as I understand by ‘very very nice’. Also the real website demo page scrolling seems, to my eyes, quite slow when the video is playing.
That’s why, that’d be very useful to have a bunch of indicator like CPU usage, battery monitor with percentages, and frame rate counter, so we can really see scientifically how good this mobile flash player implementation is.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Let me address some of your questions.
Battery life: I haven’t yet done any testing on how Flash affects the battery life of the Nexus One. Having said that, if you view Flash content or any other rich media, it will affect battery life. Our utilization of the GPU will help tremendously though. But again, the more you push your device, the more battery it will eat. Anyone with any sense knows this and can plan their activities appropriately, similar to the way I have to plan what I do on my Macbook Pro.
Frame rate: I will add some debug information to future demos. But it is important to note that things will not have quite the same performance on a phone as they do on a desktop. This will also depend on the speed of the phone. For example, things run better on the Nexus One than they do on the Droid.
Nexus One vs iPhone: One thing to make clear is that I still love my iPhone. Once Android has full MS Exchange support then I would really consider switching to it. Without that I can’t get my calendar, email, etc. But the Nexus One rocks and you can customize every single part of it which I love. But despite Steve’s rants, I’m not abandoning Apple products either.
@lee
I agree fully about battery life. But the problem with websites, is that you can’t know in advance what content there will be on them.
Considering Flash is providing rich content, would it be feasible that the Mobile version of the plugin has an option like ClickToFlash, so that you can only load the content when you want and so you can control the battery and device horsepower usage more precisely?
For example, on a website that have dozen of videos (like some blogs dfor example), this would be very useful to be able to load only videos you really want to see, liek you can with ClickToFlash on desktop.
I think that on mobile phones it’s pretty important to have this option, because mobile phone batteries have a small capacity (generally 1400-1500mAh), and it’s very important for the user to be able to control it’s battery usage as precisely as possible.
What do you think?
@Jeff Johnson
You can do that on the iPad, as a dedicated App.
Indeed, even if there is no Flash plugin for iPhone OS (yet (let’s stay optimist on that)), Adobe Flash Pro CS 5 will allow you do create iPhone OS native Apps for both iPod Touch/iPhone and iPad platforms with Flash/Adobe AIR content.
So whatever you can do with Flash and Adobe AIR today, you’ll be able to deliver it on iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad as dedicated apps on the App Store, thanks to Adobe Flash Pro CS 5.
Look at the other video on this Blog showing demos of Adobe AIR and Flash apps for the iPhone (http://theflashblog.com/?p=1737).
@iFrodo I agree 100% about click2flash for mobile devices. I actually propose something a little more elegant where the developer could provide a still image which could then be clicked on.
@lee
The problem with letting developers decide to put a still image or not is that the user is not totally in control of what is loaded or not.
If the developer doesn’t implement the feature, and so make his Flash object auto load, than the user won’t control the loading of the Flash content.
For me, this should be an option that the user choose like: “Load Flash content only when they are clicked” on the plugin preferences (or the browser preferences).
The implementation should than be:
- If the developer have implemented this function already, use developer implementation and still image
- If not, use first frame if the Flash content.
With current Desktop version of Flash it’s already possible for the developer to implement a still image that needs to be clicked to load the Flash content.
But what I really like with ClickToFlash, is that it is the user who decide when and what Flash content is loaded, not the developer.
@iFrodo no I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The developer can provide an image in the HTML. When and if a user clicks on the image, the Flash content is loaded. Essentially it would be exactly like ClickToFlash except you would be able to customize the gray box with an image.
A few questions Lee:
- How would developers be able to sell their Flash apps on Android/BB phones? You have to setup your own webstore on your site or are these apps executable & can be sold through the phones Appstores?
- Is there one good screen resolution to design for so you don’t have to customize each app for each device resolution? Each Android device seems to have a different screen res.
- What version of Android does Flash 10.1 require?
Wow, this seems insanely faster then my iPhone. Need to get an android phone next
.
@Lee
Also another idea that I’d really like Adobe to do:
Open Source the Flash runtime (Flash Player) and document the whole Flash runtime implementation so that anyone can create its own Flash runtime player.
To ensure full compatibility between Flash runtimes, put in the license a term that specify that any Flash runtime must pass a validation process that you define and develop, before it can be distributed.
That’d allow others to make their own implementation, and more importantly, that would allow Web browser makers to make highly optimised Flash runtime implementation for their browser, and more particularly to integrate a Flash runtime directly on the browser core, which will remove all the bottleneck of the plug-ins mechanism for display rendering for example.
For Internet centric OSes like Palm WebOS, Android, iPhone OS or Google Chrome OS, this seems to me very important that a technology so in the heart of the Web (today at least), like Flash must be open and the most integrated to Web browsers as possible. For that, only Web browser developer can do it (integrate the runtime directly) and to do that they have to be able to do their own runtime.
This would make Flash a real standard and you could also benefit from optimization and feature suggestion of the community to help Flash getting better and better.
Of course, Adobe Flash Pro would still be proprietary and closed source, no need to open source it, but I still don’t understand why the runtime isn’t open source yet, because I only see disadvantages to keep it closed source, not a single advantage to that (well except if you would open source it widely without including a compatibility validation process, like I suggest).
What do you think?
@Lee
Also my last suggestion would allow to see fully compatible Flash runtimes running on platform Adobe is not yet supporting, like Haiku OS, MorphOS, AmigaOS…etc
Because, contrary to what you claim, Flash is far from being cross-platform, it only supports the major platforms (Mac OS X (and its derivates (iPhone OS)), Linux (and its derivates (Android, Palm WebOS…), Windows (and its derivates (Windows Mobile)) and Symbian).
I know that it’s quite difficult for a single company to support all the existing platforms, but that’s where open sourcing is helpful. If you just see Gecko web engine or WebKit, you can see port of them for almost all existing platform, even the smallest one. A proprietary technology like Flash can’t beat that.
So there are two major advantages in open sourcing the Flash runtime entirely (with compatibility validation process/tool of course):
- This allows Web browsers to integrate Flash directly int he browser and so take parts of the whole power of the underlying OS (because it removes the bottleneck of the plug-ins mechanism) and allows more optimizations
- This would make Flash a real standard and we would see Flash runtimes for a lot more platforms than today (where it’s only limited to major computer platforms)
-Including a validation tool/process for runtimes would remove the only possible disadvantage of open sourcing, which would have been compatibility issues.
@Lee
I like everything that I’m seeing so far with Flash mobile development. However, I have a few concerns about testing these applications. It seems that the only way to truly test your app (IPhone, Android, etc.), is to have the actual device on hand. As an example, the IPhone simulator in Xcode is nice but you still need to have the app on your IPhone to see your application’s true performance. Also, how can we be sure that a mobile app written for the IPhone will run just as smooth on an Android (or other mobile OS) device? I’m interested in developing for both IPhone and Android and since I have an IPhone already, would I also have to have an Nexus One for example? I’m not too sure that developers would want to buy multiple devices especially since there are service contracts involved (with the phones anyway).
It may seem silly (and maybe Adobe has this figured out) but I think it is something all Flash developers need to think about. I don’t think Device Central is going to be enough for testing since we are going to have multi-touch capabilities and possibly access to device specific apis. It would be nice if you could shed some light on this.
Thanks!
Lee noone said you couldn’t do Flash on a smartphone. The real question is do we need Flash on a mobile browsing device….
I would be very curious how the Demo at http://www.lucid.it would perform under Android running Flash Player 10.1. If anyone out there is capable of testing this I would love to hear back from you.
Jason Villmer
Director, Lucid
http://www.lucid.it
villmer@lucid.it
Wy can’t anyone browser to a full flash site? Can the phone version handle a full flash site? how does it render?
@Jason Villmer
Those demos run shockingly slow on my desktop, dual core 2.8ghz. I can’t imagine android based devices will run them well with 1/5th the CPU and 1/10th the memory
@Mark
Yes. We need it. Flash is a very necessary part of the internet now.
Will the flash player run on the older android phones with the ARM11-processors as well or just the brand new ones?
I got a european HTC Hero and would love to see flash player 10.1 on my device :]
While Flash is currently very important to many websites it is proprietary software that benefits Adobe above anyone else. It’s not an open source protocol.
Anyway, my only real concern is poor battery life due to flash-based advertising. Not to mention the fact that it’s annoying as hell. Your click2flash dreams are an. advertising company’s worst nightmare. If Adobe allows you to block their content they’ll abandon the Flash platform in a second. A still image isn’t going to appease the advertisers either, as the whole point of Flash-based advertising is to catch your eye through movement, or interactivity.
Most of you are only thinking of this from the consumer perspective. You’re not thinking about how it affects hardware manufacturers (i.e. Unrealistic battery life expectations) and advertisers (everyone is blocking my ad, so what’s the point of advertising with Flash). Although a few of you did mention development.
Hey Lee,
Thanks for demoing Alchemist in your video!
awww shucks, I thought the beta was already available for the NexusOne, now I’m sitting here with it in my hands unable to test it out = ( looking forward to a release = )
@Doug
Flash is a world of hurt…
Hi
i am playing advertisement video with another video(movies).i am streaming video(movies)
using FMS and advertisement video using HTTP protocol . i pause running video and play
advertisement video at specified position .but i am facing one problem . problem is here.
whenever advertisement video play then running video is paused . playhead for running video
is moved more than specified position but advertisement video play fine.
For Example:- when i am playing advertisement video at 30 seconds .then running video pause at
30 seconds and playhead should be at 30 seconds until advertisement video is completed but
playhead is moved more 30 seconds.
so please tell me about “why is this happening ” and ” what am i doing wrong”
Thanks in advance