September 23, 2010

Webinos – here comes another ‘standard’

Filed under: News — Steve @ 1:55 PM

The BBC is running an article today on Webinos, a collaboration between 22 organisations including W3C, mobile service providers, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, and a few academic institutions. It’s got some serious EU funding (€10M). The vision is developing for a single virtual device by providing extension APIs for different platforms, with secure communication.

The project statement says:

webinos is an EU-funded project aiming to deliver a platform for web applications across mobile, PC, home media (TV) and in-car devices. The webinos project will define and deliver an Open Source Platform and software components for the Future Internet in the form of web runtime extensions, to enable web applications and services to be used and shared consistently


And a quote from the project leader:

That’s what we want to address – to provide a system that runs on all these platforms and domains, where the developer comes up with one application for one platform and lets you run it on all these devices – mobiles, automotive, gaming, and so on.


Sound familar? Thought so. Isn’t a ‘web-runtime extension’ a similar thing to Flash Player? Don’t solutions for cross-platform already exist in one form or another, like PhoneGap?

I’m sceptical; while I’m all for anything that helps developers to deliver and extend functionality across platforms (hell, I’m a Flash Platform developer!), throwing €10M of public money into a commercial/public partnership seems like we’re reinventing the wheel. What’s the ‘win’ here? The consortium is an odd mix of academic/commercial entities, and the large number of service providers backing this makes me wonder about the real motivation.

So, one to watch? Not sure yet.

September 21, 2010

Electric vehicle research – Flex app

Filed under: Flex,Projects — Steve @ 8:47 PM

Recently I’ve been working on a side-project with Warwick Manufacturing Group to create a simple research-gathering application, using Flex. The application work itself isn’t anything clever, just some video/audio and basic data collection, but the research project is quite interesting – electric vehicles don’t make a lot of sound, and cars that don’t make any sound may cause more pedestrian injuries and accidents because people can’t hear them coming. Researchers are now looking at how to alleviate this problem by generating sound from the vehicle like an engine, but not necessarily the sound of an engine. In fact the sound could be anything at all.

This project is called ELVIN (ELectric Vehicle with Interactive Noise) and is a cute little van that will drive around playing a range of sounds. The purpose of the application is to allow people to evaluate the sounds used by the van, and the data gathered will be used to inform further research into safety and a number of other factors, including nuisance and brand perception – imagine living next to a busy road full of all-electric cars generating the same monotone sound, or a hybrid Ferrari that sounded ‘wrong’. There’s also big potential for aftermarket products; in twenty years’ time instead of a performance exhaust system you might just purchase an upgraded sound.

It’s interesting stuff, and it was fun to create a little app to help this research along. It’s already gathering useful data about perceptions to the current sounds the van is evaluating, but they need as much data as possible – to find out more about the project and to try it for yourself, head to http://go.warwick.ac.uk/elvin

September 14, 2010

Tuesday picks 14 Sept

Filed under: Links — Tags: — Steve @ 9:44 PM

Here’s what I hope will be a regular posting of my Flash-related picks from the last week or so:

Tune in next week for more :)

September 7, 2010

Mobile UIs: is AIR + Multiscreen the solution?

Filed under: AIR,Flex,Mobile,UI/UX — Steve @ 12:08 PM

UX consultant Suzanne Ginsburg has posted a good article entitled Android & iPhone App Design: Is it twice the work? It’s a great insight into what to consider when developing an application UI for mobile devices, discussing the cross-platform differences and platform UI conventions that require consideration, including elements like device button types and placement. You have to consider your UI on anything from small phones to large tablet devices, while targeting one OS, and this means you either create separate versions of your app (e.g. Angry Birds and Angry Birds HD on iOS) or carefully optimise your UI design.

After reading the article, I wondered how well Adobe AIR could really address these considerations, especially versus tools like OpenPlug ELIPS that export native code from a Flex project; at the platform level it will remove the need to code in native languages, and arguably would be more ‘native’ than a HTML web app, but AIR won’t be able to reach every platform, and doesn’t directly address the other issues discussed; we need more than the AIR platform on its own to solve this one.

Adobe has a strategy for this  – something it terms ‘multiscreen projects’. This concept goes a long way to allowing developers to get applications onto as many devices/platforms as possible, but it’s still a tricky thing to attempt to solve.  If the tools support the idea of decoupling application logic and views, the abundance and maturity of AS3 MVC frameworks out there now should make it even easier to design an application and target different devices. Good tooling and component libraries has been one of Flex’s strengths, but it would also help to have a strong set of mobile-optimised UI components for each platform. Flex 4.5 (Hero) is the first evidence of this at Adobe’s end, but I’m hopeful we’ll see other open-source and paid component frameworks for mobile Flex being made available.

Finally, going back to Suzanne’s article, all the UX articles I’ve read so far on mobile UI development seem to concentrate on catering for different screen sizes and resolutions with a fixed layout, but part of me wonders why this can’t be partly addressed with fluid layouts. We’ve been doing this for years with HTML (and Flex), and while it can’t deal with extremes, it is possible with careful scaling and layout work to achieve a UI that can work on different resolutions and screens. It’s not ideal, but it’s nothing new either.  One of the key differences between a desktop UI and a mobile UI is windowing, so there is emphasis on a full-screen fixed layouts, but I wonder what the scope is for ‘best-fit’, flexible fullscreen UI layouts in future?

September 5, 2010

YAY! Blogging again!

Filed under: General,Misc — Steve @ 9:23 PM

It’s been a while since I blogged anything (November last year to be precise), so it’s long overdue. Time to make amends and start writing more about my Flash/Flex adventures and other general industry stuff.

It’s been a rollercoaster year in so many ways, and in the Flash development community things have been so frenzied sometimes it’s been hard to keep up with events as they emerged. We’ve had the CS5/Apple debacle, Flash 10.1 hitting desktop and mobile, and AIR on Android, plus a lot of FUD surrounding the future of Flash with HTML5 coming onstream.

I’m sure I’m not the only Flash Platform developer out there to have been incensed by Apple’s move to block the Flash CS5 iPhone exporter; YAY! had several enquiries about possible client projects that were effectively canned because of Apple’s amendment to its developer terms and conditions, and Steve Jobs’ subsequent open letter that was so full of inaccurracies it was the last straw for many. But enough’s been written now about that now, the best way forward is to continue to demonstrate that Flash is a strong and mature platform for application development.

As for YAY! and me, I’ve just completed my first commercial Flex 4 project using Flash Builder 4, and loved it. I’ve also been trying out some other MVC frameworks other than my native Cairngorm, and I’m really liking RobotLegs; it’s lightweight, easy to get started with and I’m finding it less difficult to learn than PureMVC. I’ve also been working in OSMF, which is turning out to be a great framework for developing media delivery components, and I’m working on a test project using Flex 4.5 Hero for an Android side-project I want to do. I’m also very excited to be heading back to work alongside the University of Warwick’s Web Development Team on mobile applications, including iPhone (pragmatism is a wonderful thing). Expect more updates from now on about my adventures with the Flash Platform, but also with these new areas of interest. I might even start posting some HTML5 demos if time allows. :)