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1
Creating Flash Applications on
BREW
®
Handsets
Rupen Chanda, Computer Scientist
Adobe Systems Inc. 2
Todays Topics Introduction to Flash Lite & the BREW Extension Flash Lite BREW Extension Architecture Flash Lite BREW Extension Capabilities Content Development Process Demo Flash Lite BREW Extension 3
Introduction 4
Adobe Flash Lite What is Flash Lite? The Flash profile designed and developed for Mobile and Embedded
Devices Provides rich user experiences More than 65 million Flash-enabled devices shipping worldwide Optimized for resource constrained devices Allows content author to access device specific capabilities Supports same SWF file format as Flash Player 7 for the desktop 5
The Flash Mobile Platform
Authoring Tool Content creation tool Can import various
media types like
images, sound,
video, etc. Mobile device
simulation
SWF File Format Designed to deliver
rich user experiences
over slow dial-up
connection Open file format Compact, efficient
binary format Tag based, flexible
Flash Player Developed to keep
the binary size as
small as possible Has rich graphical
and multimedia
experience Virtual machine that
plays back SWF file 6
Flash Lite BREW Extension Flash Lite BREW Extension enables Flash content
and applications to run on select BREW handsets Flash Lite BREW extension is Based on Flash Lite 2.x. Supports BREW 2.1.3 or above 7
Flash Lite BREW Extension Content Type
Application
Content Catalog
Content
Branded App
Screen Saver Catalog
Screen Saver 8
Flash Lite
BREW Extension Architecture 9
Flash Lite BREW Extension: Architecture Three components for Flash Lite BREW content
development: Flash Professional Authoring tool with Flash Lite BREW
Post Processor capable of generating BREW compliant
*.mod file Flash Lite BREW Projector Application (includes content
specific *.mod file and *.MIF file) Flash Lite BREW Extension 10
BREW Framework
Input Text
Device Image
(Codec)
Device Text
Device Video
(Codec)
Device Audio
(Codec)
Device Content
JPEG
Vector
Font
Data
SWF
Audio
Dy
namic Data
(SWF, XML, Data
)
Persistent Data
ECMA based
ActionScript
Engine
1.1/2.0
Device
Capabilities
& Info
Core Rendering Engine
Gradients
Vectors
Embedded
Text
Bitmap
Images
Frame Buffer
Events
Network Data
Video 11
Flash Lite Content Playback Flowchart
User downloads
FlashLite Projector
Application from ADS
FlashLite BREW
extension is
downloaded
User starts
FlashLite
Projector
Application
FlashLite Projector
Application Loads
FlashLite BREW
Extension
FlashLite BREW
Extension is
Initialized
FlashLite Projector
Application provides SWF
data to the FlashLite
Extnesion
FlashLite BREW
extension initializes it
internal Frame Buffer
FlashLite BREW
extension starts its
internal timer
FlashLite BREW
extension starts
parsing and playing
back the SWF file
(continued) 12
Flash Lite Content Playback Flowchart 13
Flash Lite BREW Extension
Capabilities 14
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities 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 15
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) Basic Functionality 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 444, RGB 555, RGB
565, RGB 666, RGB888 etc.) Flexible rendering quality: Low, high, medium (most suitable
for mobile devices) 16
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) Basic Functionality 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) 17
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 18
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) Network Communication 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 19
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) Network Communication 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 20
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 21
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 Doesnt allow the content author to load additional content from
http://www.xyz.com 22
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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. 23
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 24
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 doesnt 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 25
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 26
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) 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 27
Flash Lite Extension: Capabilities
(continued) Device Integration: Can Launch arbitrary application like web browser with by
specifying URL (dependent upon the target application
registering its 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. 28
Content Development Process 29
Flash Lite BREW Content Development Process
Start
Content Author buys
Adobe Flas