Flash Lite: Where Are The Showcase Apps?
It’s good to see that, more than a year after announcing a License agreement with Macromedia, Nokia have started to bundle Flash Lite with their latest Series 60 3rd Edition devices. This is great because it takes away the biggest hassle users faced when trying to use Flash Lite content, downloading and installing the player (not to mention paying for it too). The fact that Nokia decided to include the older Flash Lite 1.1 player is a bit disappointing but they’ve already announced that this will be upgraded to the far superior Flash Lite 2.0 in the first Feature Pack for S60 3rd Edition, so they can get away with that one.
However, what I can’t let them get away with is the fact that none of the devices have any pre-installed Flash Lite applications for the user to try out (at least not on the 3250, N80, E61 and N91 that I tested). Talk about a missed opportunity! Now all a user can see when they open up the player is a screen which says “(no files)” and I’m pretty sure that most users will never give the player a second look after that. There isn’t even any information on where to download or buy content for the player.
I then try the new-look S60.com where i finally had some luck and found a great little Flash App which was designed to illustrate the benefits of the new OSS-Browser. Now that is something they could have bundled in with the player! An introduction to one of the newest additions to the S60 OS which doubles as a nice little introduction to Flash Lite. In fact all they really needed to include was a small Flash Lite application which contained a couple of screens detailing what Flash Lite is, followed by a screen containing some information on where to find some apps to try (a link to the excellent Adobe Flash Lite Exchange for example).
It’s a shame that Nokia have managed to get rid of the large barrier of downloading and installing Flash Lite but failed to remove the much smaller barrier of introducing users to the technology. I just hope that this issue is also rectified in the first S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack as it would be great for new users to experience Flash Lite 2.0 in all its glory.
I typically try to avoid shameless plugs - but in this case…
Our company, Yiibu (http://yiibu.com) has a few Flash Lite apps that might be of interest (lifestyle + learning focused) - however, they were all designed for the 176 x 208 aspect ratio (and e60) so I’m not sure if they’ll work on the wider, landscape style displays all that well.
Ciao
I will be release soon my Kero Mobile application for Series 60 3rd edition. The application developed in Flash Lite 1.1 so it will run on your phone. More infos here biskero.org and biskero.com
Alessandro
Hi,
I heard that with the feature pack 3.1 there will be the possibility to view videos (you tube etc…) with the oss nokia browser via flash lite 2.0… does anyone know if this is true ? With the browser of the s60 3.0 I was able to open any video on the net… I find it difficult to know what the hell flash lite is…
Jun 16th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
[...] There were several first-time entrants in the Carnival this week, which was great to see. Tarek Abu-Esber wants to know where all the Flash Lite demo apps are, pointing out that handset vendors are missing an opportunity to promote the potentially powerful technology. [...]