Two stories today confirm what I've believed for some time. Given the write
many times, test everywhere nature of J2ME apps, it's only a matter of time
before Macromedia repeats it's capture of client-side programming.
Last time it was Flash vs. Java Applets. In that case Applets were pretty
decent, it IS possible to write reliable portable applets. With J2ME Midlets
it's far more difficult to deal with all the differences between handsets.
Just a matter of time before Macromedia really took advantage of this.
Story One: MACROMEDIA AND QUALCOMM EXTEND FLASH LITE TO BREW®
http://brew.qualcomm.com/jsp/brew/en/press_room/press_releases/2005/10_18_05
a.html
Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) and QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) today
announced an agreement under which Macromedia® will create a version of
Macromedia Flash Lite as an extension for BREW. As a result of this
agreement, the large BREW developer community and more than two million
Flash® developers will be able to create rich, engaging mobile content on
the Flash Platform for the BREW solution, QUALCOMM's established content
delivery and monetization system.
Expected to ship next year, this new extension of Flash Lite for BREW will
help further evolve the wireless value chain worldwide. BREW developers will
realize the benefit of rich mobile experiences and the return on investment
when they add Flash to their applications, while Flash developers will have
a new channel to monetize their mobile work. Subscribers will ultimately
benefit from a wide array of the richest services and content possible. The
announcement today builds on an existing QUALCOMM and Macromedia agreement.
Story 2: Flash Lite‹version 2.0.
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/articles/flashlite_v2_preview.html
The Flash Lite 1.1 player is based on a subset of the Flash 4 code base,
which means that the modern dot-syntax and object-orientedlike development
model is not supported. But with the introduction of Flash Lite 2.0, we can
now say goodbye forever to tellTarget() and the older slash-syntax of Flash
4. Flash Lite 2.0 fully supports ActionScript 2.0 based on the ECMA 262
standard.
Developers (like me) can also breathe a sigh of relief for ActionScript 2.0
conventions such as a modern event model (movie clip and object events), tab
index control, shape drawing API, and better SWF compression.
Video Playback
Flash Lite 2.0 now supports video playback using the video rendering
application on the device. This means that any video file that the device
supports can also be rendered in Flash Lite 2.0. (Typically this includes
3GPP and MPEG-4 files.)
Question is, Will Sun step up to the plate and start to enforce a true
portable standard for J2ME? In any case, this will get interesting.
William Volk
CEO, Bonus Mobile Entertainment
858 692 1124
Received on Sat Dec 3 06:44:37 2005