Thread: Flaemo - Flash based maemo-like app online
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devu is offline devu
2010-04-18 , 05:17
Posts: 431 | Thanked: 239 times | Joined on Apr 2010 @ London
#19
Hi buurmas and thanks for interesting questions.

Originally Posted by buurmas View Post
It's an interesting idea. Some observations and questions, devu.

You mention that this is for the N900, and someone asked about older devices. But if I understand correctly, what you're doing is cross platform. I'm accessing the Flaemo site on my N810 and I can access it on my desktop. I'm guessing that everything you do will work for older Internet Tablets as long as:

1. Everything you do runs in Flash 9. We've been told we're not getting Flash 10.
Yes, unfortunately that's true, however I am thinking about this that way, If I am able to develop some stuff using 10.1 RC right now, installed this on my 7 years old PC without any support of GPU and mobile features and it's working. As soon as debian/symbian version will be ready why not to install it on older machines? Even if you cannot use power of new Flash you can notice significant improvements anyway. For example I see about 10% less memory consumption. And that way you can install Air hopefully. But this is just my theory and I am not sure about backward compatibility of new distribution in terms of 0S.

2. Demands on the processor aren't too great. Flaemo runs smoothly on my N810, but most Flash games do not, even on low quality mode. We would probably want to be able to turn off desktop effects, for example.
Don't worry . When you will launch any application will open in new window and turn off everything except menu bar to save resources. I am also planing to have second mode to launch app directly without need to go via Desktop. The architecture is ready to do so. For example via link like this flaemo.com/#/user/1/app/1

3. You're not doing something specific to N900 hardware. For example, pre-N900 devices don't have cellular capability.
Not for now, all you need is internet connection however even if I will, Device Manager Class will manage which functionality can be run on your device. This way will show you apps only good for your device.

Questions:
Q1. Will your stuff run offline, or will it require an Internet connection?
Q2. Similar -- will it run off a web site or be downloaded to run locally?
Only Air is an good option to recompile flash app for desktop app
Otherwise internet connection is required. More complikated way is to create SWF-2-EXE tool. And I have experience with Zinc. Hovever never on Linux platform. Maybe some developers here could help. I've seen KMPlayer able to play swf file and looks like some good option. I'll have a look.

The good thing about flash in this case is, once you accessed some application and this app doesn't need internet connection itself, for example small game but without saving top scores on the server. You can play unplugged.

Q3. How will you attract developers? I'm guessing that Flash developers are used to a certain business model: using their Flash app to attract people to a site with ads. But it sounds like you're doing something quite different -- using Flash as a development platform for various mobile devices. Will Flash developers catch the vision?
For now there is no many Flash developers that know about it. I need to create Flaemo from scratch and provide some API. Set of libraries and tools that will help others develop something for Flaemo. I will never let some rubbish app comes to Flaemo. It must go through quality check in terms of usability and performance. 90% Flash productions are badly done, without any optimization techniques. But also porting some game for mobile required quite different approach. You have no idea how many tips and trick I had to use here .

One example: When I was looking for solution how to slide screen as smooth as possible one of the idea was to use some tile engine api. There is tones of platform games in Flash using that. Works great on desktop but for n900 it was rubbish solution, because of memory consumption. So each task has specific needs.

Anyway, if I'll be ready for sure will spread the news around Flash developers community.
Last edited by devu; 2010-04-18 at 05:20.