Chapter 22. Deploying Flash on Mobile Devices

We are lucky as Flash developers. The latest surveys show that more than 95% of all web users worldwide are able to view some level of Flash content. The dominance of Flash as the Web's rich media delivery platform is clear.

In the mobile arena, however, there is no one dominant technology for rich media and content delivery. Technologies utilized vary by carrier, phone manufacturer, and phone platform (I will spare you the acronyms). Macromedia hopes to change this with the introduction of Flash Lite.

Flash Lite appeared in 2003 as Flash Lite 1.0, which provided Flash developers with the opportunity to easily create compelling, rich content for mobile phones using the IDE they know and love. Flash Lite 1.1 (the current version as of the writing of this book), released in 2004, provides additional features, including the ability to communicate with web servers over HTTP.

Flash Lite 1.1 is based on the Flash 4 scripting engine and the Flash 5 object model; the next version of Macromedia's Flash Lite player (2.0) will be based on Flash Player 7 and includes support for ActionScript 2.0 and other exciting new features. Although many techniques for Flash Lite carry over directly from Flash development for the Web (including the IDE), the following solutions will help you address issues related specifically to Flash Lite development.