Programmer magazine February article: Flash Lite challenges

Flash Lite challenges

Wen/min Hui

Link: http://blog.donews.com/yanhui/archive/2006/02/18/731161.aspx

On the mobile phone platform, the most popular is the j2-based technology, which is a kjava application familiar to Chinese developers. Thanks to its cross-platform capabilities, coupled with Sun's positive push, it has always been a favorite of developers. But now we have a strong rival in the development of the mobile phone platform Flash Lite 2.0 and the corresponding Flash Player sdk7 multimedia development platform, which was acquired by Adobe recently by Macromedia.

Both Flash Lite and j2's technologies allow us to make full use of the computing power of mobile devices, without the need for networks and servers, even if we need to connect to the network, A large amount of work can also be done by the client to reduce the pressure on the server and the cost of network bandwidth, which is the biggest difference between the technology and WAP and is also the advantage. Therefore, in theory, both J2EE and Flash Lite can be used to implement business, entertainment, management, and other functions on mobile devices. Daniel J brongile, who is in charge of Flash mobile promotion in Asia Pacific, said, "There is a certain competition between Flash Lite and J2EE ."

However, the Flash Lite 1.1 released by Macromedia in the past has not attracted much attention, and it cannot be compared with the influence produced by j2s. This is because there are many problems with the original version, and even the Flash program of the PC version cannot be directly played.

However, the new Flash Lite 2.0 version has completely changed the competition situation. Flash Lite 2.0 is fully based on the Flash 7 Standard, which means that applications on mobile devices can be developed on the flash PC development platform. It not only supports dynamic XML data, but can use the same processing method as Flash Player 7 to load and parse external XML data, and in terms of data transmission (persistent data, it supports local storage and return specific application information, such as parameter settings, highest score, and user name. This will provide developers with a more powerful development environment. The feedback from Flash developers around the world is clear: the status quo can significantly accelerate the development of exciting content and interfaces for mobile phones.

Flash Lite 2.0 can also use the encoder supported by mobile devices to dynamically load multimedia content, such as images, sounds, videos and SWF Content, and even support cameras. In addition, the text processing has also made great progress. It allows users to modify the text color, size, and other attributes while the program is running, in addition, Vector Fonts can be embedded into the application for rendering text.

After flash was developed into several versions, more development functions were gradually added to the design platform, allowing users to develop a lot of interactive applications. The most important thing was the built-in ActionScript code. Now Flash Lite 2.0 allows developers to easily create vector images and dynamic shapes when running programs. Moreover, its standard ActionScript 2.0 can use event models (video editing and Object events), drawing APIs, and a better SWF compressors for development and creation. Jonathan Duran, who has been working at Macromedia for five years and works on technical support, said: "Because Flash Lite 1.1 does not support loading external media, you have to add everything to SWF. Now, you can use the latest version to load external images and sounds like JPEG and MP3 from your device or website. Obviously, now you can easily update the image and sound in SWF and make the SWF file much smaller than before ."

Of course, mobile developers will not ignore this situation. We have also started a Comparative Discussion on Flash Lite and j2's in various forums. Both Flash Lite and J2EE have their own advantages and disadvantages. This advantage and disadvantage will surely play a role in different fields. For example, it has inherent advantages in compatibility, interface design, animation display, server integration, and entry-level development. But at the same time, it has security mechanisms, storage capabilities, network connection and other aspects must be stronger than Flash Lite. At the same time, because of the JCP promoted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it also has greater advantages in international standardization and vendor support.

Therefore, if Flash Lite can be widely supported in some fields, it does give developers a better choice than j2s. However, most of the time they are applicable to different needs, there is no possibility that Flash Lite will replace. However, a senior Flash Developer said, "As a developer, the most important thing is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of various technologies and use appropriate tools to do the most appropriate work. As for the "most technically powerful" problem, you don't have to fight for it ." As another platform on the smartphone operating system, the two are facing the same promotion problems. Non-smart phones still occupy most of the market, and the smartphone platform is also in the hands of Microsoft, Symbian and other vendors, which will bring greater challenges to both.