Nokia 770 development options... Flash?

For some time now I’m looking into building rich internet applications using Flash. I’m very impressed by Flex 2 and did some adventures in developing with it. Flex 2 is still alpha and targets the new Flash version 8.5. Now I have a Nokia 770 device, and the Flash version on it is 6.0.82.0.

I’m also looking into how applications can be developed for the Nokia 770 (yes, I’m a busy man without much focus;-) ). I installed the C/C++ development environment, but I actually don’t want to go back to C/C++ development with all its difficulties. Other options are Mono and Python which I’m also currently invesigating.

Today I was at the first day of first European Flash conference http://www.sparkeurope.com/. There was a very interesting session on the open source community for Flash.One of the sessions was by Edwin van Rijkom on Screenweaver, an open source project for building Rich Desktop Applications. He is wrapping Flash in a host application and provides access to the host OS and native code on the host OS through the Screenweaver host application. Because the Nokia 770 also has Flash installed I was dreaming about the possibility to create such a host application for Flash that provides access to all Nokia 770 features and the possibility to hook it into the Nokia 770 menu structure. I discussed this idea with Edwin and he thought that it would be a great idea.

I searched for people who tried such an approach on linux. I ended up on a blog post by Darron Shall who created a C# host for Flash, wasn’t happy with it and searched for a more cross platform approach. He looked into XulRunner to host the Flash application. I just looked into this approach, but I’m afraid that running XulRunner on the Nokia 770 would be to havy. The runtime is big, and on top of that you get the additional Flash runtime which is something like 1.5 Mb as well. Way to much for creating small apps for the 770.

It would be great if a really small Flash hoster could be created for the Nokia 770. I think Flash is a great platform for creating applications. Maybe someone did already something in this direction? If this is the case, please let us know!

3 Comments

  • > If this is the case, please let us know!



    Yes, definitely let us know, especially if it runs full-screen (but not required :-). Amazing they did not think about providing this at launch but probably too excited about their mameo cathedral. Who in his right mind will invest serious-$ into the mameo ramp-up for some admittedly very cool device with unproven mass market appeal, let alone any hint of "market share"? Same thing happened to Tapwave with their Zodiac (on top of PalmOS being dead). Just have Nokia spend 2% of "their" mameo effort into offering decent, stand-alone Flash (or even Realbasic) support for quick RAD / demo development.

  • 430758.. Bang-up :)

  • 430758.. Corking :)

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