Fixing Flash Lite 3
Didn't know it was broken? Well, depends on who you talk to I guess. Even back when FL 3 was in beta, there were discussions flying around to do with the new security model that Flash Lite was "inheriting" from Flash Player 8, and that essentially we would find that backwards compatibility for many FL apps would be broken. For a recently posted developer's perspective, read Ugur's post here.
The MaD team have always been listening and through Bill have announced that there are some fixes coming along shortly. Aaprt from potentially fixing the issue Flash Lite developers have had with Flash Lite 3, it demonstrates Adobe's ability to change as a result of the combined community voice. It takes a lot to change, especially in the mobile world where the device vendors control such a large part of the ecosystem, so this is not an insignificant announcement. Thanks Adobe and MaD team.
Labels: Adobe, Flash Lite
posted by Dale Rankine @ 11:09 AM
2 comments
links to this post
2 Comments:
G'day Dale,
if Adobe knew that it was buggy at beta time why they didn't fixed before release? I adore to slam phone manufacturers like pretty much everybody else, but it is Adobe fault to not realize it is not easy to update software when it is burnt into a rom. FlashLite it is now as fragmented as hell and you cannot trust anymore specific phone models to have a certain version of FL owing to the fact that some user may apply firmware updates and some others won't. The fact Adobe react is positive (like they had any other choice anyway) but how they plan to make users aware of it and how install the fix is another question.
Hi Emanuele, thanks for your comment. Not having an easy update path and fixing this issue with Flash Lite 3 are two separate things in my opinion. Adobe haven't had much choice in terms of making a fixed version of the player on handsets, just like J2ME and other runtimes that are embedded at the point of manufaturing. THis is the way of the mobile market - perhaps Flash Lite not becoming fragmented was alwasy a pipe dream, whose to say.
Not fixing this in beta is something that someone from Adobe will ultimately have to answer, but my guess is that it was a combination of pressure and the requests of the OEMs, and of Adobe's vision of "one player across all screens" and them trying to move to a point of not having a fragmented Flash player environment. The mobile guys perhaps now concede that while it worked for them, it didn't work for the developers working in the real world and mobile ecosystem - arguably the most important piece for them and the ultimate success of Flash on devices.
Yes, firmware updates will contribute to fragmentation, and I know Adobe are aware of this as well. This is something bigger than Adobe, but the point that I am praising them on in this post was that they have (only recently) come to a place of seeing that providing tools and a platform are only part of the puzzle with mobile - the part that has bitten developers has been the deployment piece, and you'll see that for the next 12-18 months, a lot of their announcements and initiatives may be around addressing these issues. Fixing Flash Lite 3 is part of this response.
Cheers.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home