Richard: Macromedia have been working in the mobile space for a couple of year now how did it all start?

Anup: It really began with several enquiries from handset manufacturers about putting Flash into their wireless and mobile devices. So we had Nokia wanting to put Flash into the Communicator series and Motorola the A920. At that time, 2 or 3 years ago, Flash 5 was the desktop product and we used that to create the first embedded version. Today we are on Flash Player 7 for the desktop and Flash Player 6 for embedded devices. So as the desktop player evolves we evolve the embedded player but there is a lag of about 12 to 18 months. There are two reasons for this, the first is simply the work required to take the desktop code base and implement it on an embedded environment, the second is that while we can easily update the desktop player if any small problems should slip though, that luxury is not available to the embedded version. So we take some extra time to give device manufacturers the reassurance that the code base is totally solid.

Richard: So where does Flash Lite come in?

Anup: This whole process has been a learning experience for us and what we have realized is that we needed a feature set that was more tailored for mobile devices. There were a number of things in the Flash desktop that did not make sense in a mobile phone and conversely a number of features which are not in the desktop player which would make sense on a mobile version.

On the desktop for example you can create pop-up windows which are not appropriate on a small screen. Also on these devices you have no mouse and no QWERTY keyboard so we needed to be change the player to remove the assumptions about the availability of a mouse pointer or keyboard. These are very rudimentary things if you have been developing software for mobile devices, but coming from a desktop environment they take time to appreciate. Then you have feature which are necessary or useful for mobile, using the numeric keypad for data entry, being able to send an SMS message, check battery level or the network signal strength. This type of feature was not available to developers in the Flash 5 environment.

The other big factor for us was the desire to create the same kind of ecosystem of developers for mobile as we have for desktop, so we really needed a target mass market mobile phone. Devices like the Motorola A920 or Nokia Communicators were not going to address the mass market, they have more memory and processing power and can deliver a rich experience using Flash but they won’t be in the hands of millions of consumers. It was that mass market goal coupled with discussions we had with NTT DoCoMo that made us realize we should develop a profile specifically for mass market mobile phones. That resulted in Flash Lite and last year’s announcement with NTT DoCoMo that all new i-mode handsets would ship with Flash Lite embedded in them.

So Flash Lite is a profile of the desktop player specifically created for mobile phones and the new 1.1 release take the profile further.

Richard: In what ways does Flash Lite 1.1 advance this mobile profile?

Anup: In several ways. We have extended the audio support to include MP3, PCM, ADPCM as well as SMAF audio from Yamaha which is in a lot of their audio chips used by mobile phones. What is interesting about this support, excepting SMAF, is that they are all software codecs within the Flash player.

Macromedia_FL_sshot4_phone_small.jpg" align="left">Another significant element is the addition of phone specific features that are now exposed to Flash developers including the ability to send SMS messages from within a Flash a movie. If you think about today’s SMS applications almost all require the subscriber to remember the destination address and what they need to put in the body of the SMS. With Flash a developer can now create a visual interface, say for a TV contest, which can show pictures of the contestants, let the user select their choice and then automatically send the SMS. This would be a much more effective voting application and would take less than an hour for someone to create in the same tool they use for authoring their desktop content.

A third category, which is particularly important for GSM operators that are supporting the 3GPP specification, is inclusion of an SVG Tiny player. I also think this is an important illustration of where Macromedia is going as there have been many questions about our strategy in the mobile phone space, would we really get it? Support for SVG Tiny is a perfect example of our leadership in mobile multimedia space. Many of our European customers told us that they only had the resources to support Flash or SVG Tiny, both in the phone and in terms of development. So we tasked our engineers to see what we could do, we even looked at third party implementations but we concluded was that it was relatively straight forward to use the core code in the Flash Player to create an add-on which would also play back SVG Tiny content. So we have shown we are able to support the standards unique to the mobile industry as well as show we have enough expertise in animation, vector graphics and interactivity to create innovative technologies. It’s about us hearing and understanding what the market needs and what we can do to create easy to use technologies which make data services more interesting and compelling for consumers.

The final feature is network connectivity which is very familiar to the web authoring community but again because of the environment we were targeting it was not in 1.0. 1.1 now provides the ability to use connectivity so developers can create dynamic applications which get data from existing web services or download different portions of an application based on what the user is doing on their handset.

Richard: So how does Flash Lite sit with Flash 6 for embedded devices, are they complimentary?

Anup: It’s not a case of one vs. the other but rather about categories for different types of devices. The requirements for a mobile phone are different from a set-top box which in turn are different from an electronic toy. What you will see from us is a series of profiles for different categories of devices, in fact we already have a set of guidelines and specifications for interactive television and we encourage all TV manufactures that implement Flash to follow those guidelines. In the same way Flash Lite is a feature set for mobile phones. While Flash embedded will also be in mobile phones, such as the Nokia Communicator or Motorola A920, we are communicating to our licensees that Flash Lite is the recommended configuration. Most of the OEMs and operators understand that to make it easy for the authoring community to deliver content requires consistency and we believe they will embrace Flash Lite.

Richard: Another aspect of the ease of content creation is obviously being able to create content which works across multiple platforms, how achievable is that with Flash Lite?

Anup: There will always be some differences; the touch screen in UIQ creates both opportunities and challenges that do not exist on a Series 60 device. One of the advantages of Flash is that by using vector graphics and other tools the content can scale from one device to another, taking into account different screen aspect ratio and hardware user interfaces. There are now some 20 models of DoCoMo phone shipping in Japan with Flash and the same content works on almost all of them. The only difference is that DoCoMo has additional capabilities, such as using Flash for the imode home page, for 3G handsets that don’t exist on the 2.5G models to help differentiate the offerings and encourage consumer uptake of 3G.

Richard: However for the author Flash Lite is not just a subset of the desktop player, how do they know what they can deliver to a Flash Lite handset?

Anup: We are addressing this in three ways. Firstly through education; as part of each content development kit created with a manufacturer we provide details on best practices, guidelines and sample code so that every developer who wants to target a device or category of device can understand the capabilities they can expect. Secondly in the same way as a desktop developer can use Macromedia Flash MX to validate content against Flash 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7, to take into account reach, publication and distribution requirements they can do the same for Flash Lite 1.0 or 1.1 or the DoMoCo implementations. Finally we have Capabilities a technology that allows Flash content to discover what capabilities are available in the device it is about to run on, meaning application can be created to dynamically adjust based on the features of the Flash Player on the users handset.

So developers can choose to create content that will only run on the desktop or only on a mobile phone or both. The tool will tell them whether the capability is supported by the profile they want to publish for.

Richard: You mentioned that Content Development Kits are created with the handset manufacturers; won’t this mean a confusing proliferation of kits?

Anup: What we have today is very much driven by the current market, so there is a content development kit for the Nokia Communicator, one for the Motorola A920, but there is also a Flash Lite 1.1 kit and as Flash gets delivered to more and more devices you will start to see a common platform for multiple handsets rather than device specific kits.

Richard: When Flash Lite was first launched several commentators made much of the fact that it could act as device interface suggesting you would not need platforms such as Symbian OS, what do you think of such speculation?

Macromedia_FL_sshot1.jpg" align="right">Anup: Providing Flash as the presentation layer makes it much easier to create an interface and publish content for that interface, but you still need something underneath, so with Symbian OS we use the APIs it provides to map into the Flash runtime to implement functionality. The Symbian team believes it is a great technology because you don’t need a team of programmer to create an interface. I have been in the consumer electronics business for a number of years and have seen is that in 9 out or 10 OEM the UI design and human factors teams use Flash to prototype UIs and then ask the programming team to build that into the platform. What we are now providing is a mechanism to accelerate that process by allowing the design to stay in Flash, so it not a replacement for Symbian OS or certain applications; you will not want to build a 3D action game using Flash but you will want to use it for a tutorial which changes each month as new feature are added to a handset. It is more about how we as a technology industry can provide the best tools so content and applications developers can efficiently create the best possible user experience, ways to make it easier for consumers to find and use services. The interfaces we have shown to Symbian have wowed them and then we say we prototyped it in less than 2 days with a developer who has no mobile phone experience that is something which is not possible today with traditional technologies.

Richard: So could we speculate that one day we may see a Symbian OS based platform with a UI implemented using Flash?

Anup: That is absolutely the case, our customers are telling us it’s exactly what they want and I think it will happen but it is speculation to go beyond that. It is perhaps important to say that we are not asking the industry to build all applications in Flash but rather look at what they do and where Flash could allow them to accomplish more using the rich APIs from a platform like Symbian OS.

Richard: Does a strategy like that fits well with Symbian OS because it does not mandate a UI?

Anup: Oh absolutely and that is a big part of why we chose Symbian OS for all our internal reference work. It is incredibly powerful and gives us access to all sort of feature we find useful. It also helps us learn from all their expertise in the mobile space, which they have far more of than we do, and that is of huge value to use. Given their leadership position it made a lot of sense; it’s a natural pairing.

Even so we do and will also have various ports to other OS as well as support for multiple chipsets.

Richard: So what would your message be to developers who have not yet considered using Flash to create mobile content?

Anup: We have consistent feedback from our developer, licensees and OEMs that it is 2 to 5 times faster to create an application or content using Flash than any other available technology.

Richard: And what about existing Flash developers, what is the justification for addressing mobile?

Anup: Simple, Macromedia is on a mission to light up a billion mobile phones. Do you want to reach that audience? I think the answer is self evident.

Content Development Kits for Macromedia Flash MX are bundled as part of the professional version of the tool but can also be downloaded from the www.macromedia.com).