18 September 2008

NFL on S40 5th FP1

According yesterday news, NFL is supported on Nokia S40 5th edition FP1 and newer.
I was browsing which phones will be interested to buy and only found ONE with the required MIME type : the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic
I browsed others phones' UAprofile and no vnd.nokia.flashlite-archive.
Perhaps Nokia will release an update for these phones...

EDIT (080922) : From Bill Perry and Biskero, it seems NFL works on more than only the 5220...so it's strange UAProfiles aren't correct.

17 September 2008

Nokia Flash Lite package

From Mariam, it seems Nokia finally released a way to distribute Flash Lite application on Serie 40!
Their NFL (forget football) is no more than a zip file.
Easy to make but a so big step on games/applications releasing!
Of course, this package format is only supported by newly phones (S40 5th FP1+).

From comment on FL-Root, it also seems it handles multiple SWFs...cool!

Can't wait to test it!! I hope Nokia's emulator handles it! I can't buy one phone every month (and SE C905 is already waiting).

I only have the regret they don't use a JAR file (like SE's capuchin). How many times before distributers will add support to .NFL file ? Perhaps we'll see soon a www.getNFL.com !
And you'll also need to make a .NFL for S40 and a .SIS for S60 (using Kuneri online SWFPack?)
Minor points but perhaps Nokia will add .NFL support on S60 one day (my next dream!!)

09 September 2008

Screen sizes

Last week, I finally found some times to look a recorder eSeminar of Dale Rankine (Mocket) : Tips and Tricks for Effective Adobe Flash Lite.

In this cool eSeminar, Dale gave this tips :
Set Stage to minimum screen size, then bleed visual assets around the stage to allow for screen resizing

I'm actually using fsCommand2("FullScreen", true) to avoid problem with screensize but Dale came again with an alert
SE devices will not scale up but will scale down

ouch!
So the first tips is finally a great idea but when you see all the different screen sizes existing....wait a minute...which screen sizes EXACTLY ?

I so jumped to Bill Perry's Flash Lite enable phones sheet
I only develop for FL2.0+, since I'm not an AS1 guy so I looked to all FL2.0+ phones screen size and, well, screen sizes do not change as much as I though.
It seems I kept FL1.x phones enable screen sizes in memory.

Let's see which screen sizes exist

  • 800x352 : 1 phone (Nokia E90)*

  • 320x240 : 1 phone (Nokia E71...my future phone ? to replace my Samsung I320)

  • 320x239 : 2 phones (BREW LG)

  • 240x320 : 73 phones (56 Nokia + 17 SE)

  • 240x300 : 8 phones (BREW)

  • 240x266 : 9 phones (SE Cxxx phones ...even on the C905-capuchin inside)*

  • 176x220 : 1 phone (SE V640i)

  • 176x204 : 9 phones (BREW)

  • 128x160 : 6 phones (only Nokia S40 3rd FP2 phones)


*E90 also has a secondary display which is 240x320

So...what does this mean ? What I see is that a lot of phones are 240x320 (or near)...
Personnaly, I'll try now to make applications in 240x320 with a 240x266 effective view (27 pixels up and down for other phones)
"Wait! you loose 20 phones!"
Well, if you really want to support the others size, just use some math ;)
128x160 is a 240x300 scaled down
176x204 is a 240x278 scaled down
176x220 is a 240x300 scaled down
320x240 is a 240x320 flipped...you'll need to handle that (and the controls!)
320x239 is near a 320x240, no ? ;)
for the E90...I don't know if FL applications could be launched on the secondary display. If so, it's a 240x320!

This post is what I'm actually testing...I don't know if you should do the same.
I just point out some details which could give you some ideas for your futur development. It's up to you and the main goal of your application.

oh...and the Chumby need a 320x240 SWF ;)

04 September 2008

Summer ending !

Finally, I get back my web access.
This summer I moved to a better place, with forest and river.
A very good place to work when I'm at home!
The hardest part was...to get my Net connection back!
But it's now there and so, I was finally able to look at the eSiminar I was waiting for ages : Project Capuchin !

I can't wait to see Capuchin everywhere!
I'm a great lover of Nokia phones (and their Symbian OS) but I must admit I'll probably change my phone for a SE C905!!

Nokia, please! make a Capuchin for S40 & S60 !!!! :)
Java is far easier for Actionscript developer than this ugly Symbian C++.
And I still can accept there isn't an easy way to deploy FLite application on S40 phones, the most sold platform (at least, here in France)

Side note : I didn't receive feedback on my Flash Lite Phones Browser, so I'll probably won't update it anymore, it's useless.