Adobe Flash developing on the N900

[Dragy]

Heya

I've been looking into this phone for the past few days. It is appealing to me as a user, and also as a small-time developer. The community looks fantastic, so I decided to register and ask my question here. I hope I'm hitting the correct forum. :)

I'm a Flash game developer, and I noticed the Maemo 5 supports Flash Player 9.4, and the N900 uses the strong ARM Cortex A8 processor. This gives me hope to run light Flash games on the device.

My questions is this: would it be possible to run Flash applications through an actual Maemo application?
In other words, instead of running it through a browser webpage, would it be possible to develop an application dedicated to run the specific Flash app offline, regardless of the browser.
In this case, is the keyboard of the n900 gonna be accessible and detectable with my Flash app? or am I restricted for some of the buttons? or am I restricted for touch screen [mouse] only (like some devices :( )

(I'm well aware that Flash isn't the most efficient way to develop serious games for the N900, given the awesome specs. I'm look at it more as another way to publish my existing free games!)

Thanks!

[Capt'n Corrupt]

I would also like to know this, as it would be nifty to run a standalone flash app be it a game, or otherwise.

Any word on Adobe air?

}:^)~

[zerojay]

Heya

I've been looking into this phone for the past few days. It is appealing to me as a user, and also as a small-time developer. The community looks fantastic, so I decided to register and ask my question here. I hope I'm hitting the correct forum. :)

I'm a Flash game developer, and I noticed the Maemo 5 supports Flash Player 9.4, and the N900 uses the strong ARM Cortex A8 processor. This gives me hope to run light Flash games on the device.

My questions is this: would it be possible to run Flash applications through an actual Maemo application?
In other words, instead of running it through a browser webpage, would it be possible to develop an application dedicated to run the specific Flash app offline, regardless of the browser.
In this case, is the keyboard of the n900 gonna be accessible and detectable with my Flash app? or am I restricted for some of the buttons? or am I restricted for touch screen [mouse] only (like some devices :( )

(I'm well aware that Flash isn't the most efficient way to develop serious games for the N900, given the awesome specs. I'm look at it more as another way to publish my existing free games!)

Thanks!


Might be hard to do that since Flash is proprietary. I would suggest that instead you use a shortcut that calls Dbus to launch the web browser and point it to your game. The user wouldn't really care... just copy your flv/swf/whatever and the .html page to the tablet. User would just see "Kitten Cannon" for instance... and it would just launch the flash game in the browser automatically.

[gerbick]

I've been silent about this, since a standalone *.swf would be a way to do this, but not AIR and I don't think a standalone projector file - even if you were to use Northcode SWF Studio (windows only) or Flash Jugglor or even my fave right now, Adobe Flex - would even deploy or work in that environment.

The Adobe Open Screen Project is forthcoming - next month actually - so I'm waiting to see how that all plays out about how games, apps and what not will play out. Due to the screen size, I've actually deployed websites to FP9 level, have them fill the screen 100% and go with that as a way to deploy. But as far as local system, I'm having to sit and wait and see what's allowable and what would actually work.

So... I'm actually curious too. Especially since it's the full flash player and I can use AS3. The limitations I've heard around the microphone and video camera though are a bit alarming imho. Would love to be able to use those too.

[Dragy]

Thanks for the quick replies!
As much as I'd love my swf to be covered as an app (... in order to get the same respect as a developer, pretty much), I guess if I have no choice the idea Zerojay suggested with the browser is pretty sleek.
Do you think we'll have a the 'full screen' mode feature in the browser through the Flash, like the one present on YouTube and other Flash apps? some devices disable this, what about the n900?

gerbick, I'd like to read more about the limitation you've heard of (microphone, camera), can you please attach a link?

[pycage]

Yes, YouTube supports fullscreen on the N900 as can be seen in one of the review videos.

[endorphinum]

As i have been developing Flash applications for my n(00 since i
bought it, let me suggest you what i have learned through the last
months:

As referenc i state my fullscreen widgets project
at http://www.mojocafe.net

Though the device is able to handel Flash 9.x you should think
about the downgrading option of your games so that they would
also play on other devices.
Nowadays there are nearly a dozen of devices offering the
800x480 screen resolution, so it would be awesome to be
able to play your projects also on these devices (e.g. Archos).

Two weeks ago i relaunched the Mojocafe and downgraded the
widgets to Flash Lite 2.1 to be able to offer the project also to
mobile devices that do not have that much horsepower.

my advice in short: if you plan to develop your stage at 800x480
do so that your games will also be playable on other devices
with the same screen size.

[tomchiverton]

Thought I'd mention that at the moment camera support is disabled (and will remain so in Flash v10.1 as far as I know).

Please vote on http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/add_camera_support_to_flash_plug-in/ (and/or the linked bug report) to have this turned back on.

[tarek757]

Hi all,
i was downloading adobe flash player on my nokia N900,but i don't know which version that i have to download..

Hope to here soon..

Thanks..

[zaoltryence]

Hi all,
i was downloading adobe flash player on my nokia N900,but i don't know which version that i have to download..

Hope to here soon..

Thanks..

no need to download its already preinstalled, what you would want is the support for the flash player 10.1

[vitaminj]

I think it boils down to three options:
Launch in browser (possibly use Flash's fullscreen for less awkwardness)
Fiddle with some kmplayer code (https://vcs.maemo.org/viewvc/trunk/src/npplayer.c?view=markup&root=kmplayer) to make a standalone NPAPI plugin host
Wait for Flash 10.1, which by all reports should come with an AIR launcher

[tarek757]

no need to download its already preinstalled, what you would want is the support for the flash player 10.1

Thanks zaoltryence for rpling..
How can i support the flash player..another thing is that when i browese to the youtube,the videos dont play and been asked to upgrade the adobe flash player,and when i press the upgrade botton,a box appears in which i have to choose a version..
so what is the version..thats my question..

thank you so much

[koos]

I think it boils down to three options:
Fiddle with some kmplayer code (https://vcs.maemo.org/viewvc/trunk/src/npplayer.c?view=markup&root=kmplayer) to make a standalone NPAPI plugin host

The NPAPI support in kmplayer is already standalone, called knpplayer. It interface is like mplayer, so start it with
knpplayer -wid <windowid> -m <mime> -p <libflashplayer-path> --args ...
last arguments are the attribute you find in the embed/object tag. Write "quit" to process stdin to quit.

[zaoltryence]

Thanks zaoltryence for rpling..
How can i support the flash player..another thing is that when i browese to the youtube,the videos dont play and been asked to upgrade the adobe flash player,and when i press the upgrade botton,a box appears in which i have to choose a version..
so what is the version..thats my question..

thank you so much

so far as i know the in built flash player on the microB browser is 9.4, should be no problem to play mostly all youtube videos, mind me asking what browser are you using?.. if you are using firefox, flash player is disabled on the bowser itself, therfore you need to install the youtube enabler addon to play youtube videos... the flash player 10.1 is not even out yet for mobile phones..

[shapeshifter]

Dude, no offence, but you do know that Flash is utter crap and is hopefully gonna die out within the next few years? I know it's hard to let go of "what you know best" and if you're a capable Flash designer then you're at a loss, but seriously: If you want to catch on to the future, learn how to write games using Javascript and HTML5. It's better for the users and you're knowledge will be up to date.

Flash has to die, please refrain from supporting it.

[daemonfin]

Dude, no offence, but you do know that Flash is utter crap and is hopefully gonna die out within the next few years? I know it's hard to let go of "what you know best" and if you're a capable Flash designer then you're at a loss, but seriously: If you want to catch on to the future, learn how to write games using Javascript and HTML5. It's better for the users and you're knowledge will be up to date.

Flash has to die, please refrain from supporting it.
And you're following Steve Jobs words :D

[shapeshifter]

I said that flash had to die years ago - basically since I've been using linux. It's slow, it eats CPU, it's not available everywhere and the linux version is crashy and even more crappy than the windows one.

So now that Jobs said this, are all the people who dislike Flash gonna be labeled Apple fanbois?

(Btw: I dislike Apple and all their evil practices - dropping Flash is like the first good thing I ever heard coming from them)

[rash.m2k]

I said that flash had to die years ago - basically since I've been using linux. It's slow, it eats CPU, it's not available everywhere and the linux version is crashy and even more crappy than the windows one.

So now that Jobs said this, are all the people who dislike Flash gonna be labeled Apple fanbois?

(Btw: I dislike Apple and all their evil practices - dropping Flash is like the first good thing I ever heard coming from them)

+1, buggy **** flash is! Even Acrobat is shite! If I leave it open in my browser it silently eats up memory, at one point it was eating about 2GB of RAM and some swap space aswell.

I don't think dropping flash is a good thing - because there are those times that you actually need it, but what Apple have done is given Adobe a kick up the backside, which they really needed, hope Adobe burn, hopefully we'll get some open standards.

[vitaminj]

Dude, no offence, but you do know that Flash is utter crap and is hopefully gonna die out within the next few years? I know it's hard to let go of "what you know best" and if you're a capable Flash designer then you're at a loss, but seriously: If you want to catch on to the future, learn how to write games using Javascript and HTML5. It's better for the users and you're knowledge will be up to date.

Flash has to die, please refrain from supporting it.

Oh ok, sorry. Can you please point me towards APIs supported across all HTML5 browsers that support, in an interoperable fashion between graphics, text and 3D:
Bitmap filter effects and layering types
Dynamic audio generation
Decent text layout capabilities
Fullscreen modes with hardware-accelerated scaling
Having blocks of optimised memory-unmanaged code*
Configurable printing
Several video codecs guaranteed to be available?
3D perspective scaling
Cross-domain networking, progress monitoring
Offering "downloads" of app-generated data (e.g. saving dynamic images)
Clipboard access
P2P support*
Multitouch API*
Webcam and microphone access and data processing*
Pixel shaders*

How about a strongly typed fully-OO language?
Typed arrays*?
Low-level fast integer types?
Weak referencing available for intelligent garbage collection?
Easy advanced XML handling with E4X?

A library to make using Canvas as simple and fast as the flash display list, and have some half-decent text support?

No?

Ah.

(* = 10.1 or desktop only)

[tarek757]

so far as i know the in built flash player on the microB browser is 9.4, should be no problem to play mostly all youtube videos, mind me asking what browser are you using?.. if you are using firefox, flash player is disabled on the bowser itself, therfore you need to install the youtube enabler addon to play youtube videos... the flash player 10.1 is not even out yet for mobile phones..

Thank you zaoltryence..

So what i need now as i understood is to install the youtube enabler addon to play the youtube vedios from my nokia n900..
and the flash player will start playing.
I will do that and i will tell you what happend.
By the way i am using fire fox browser..

[zaoltryence]

Thank you zaoltryence..

So what i need now as i understood is to install the youtube enabler addon to play the youtube vedios from my nokia n900..
and the flash player will start playing.
I will do that and i will tell you what happend.
By the way i am using fire fox browser..

yup thats the way, if you want a smooth playback for flash player use the native microB browser instead.. its better than firefox as of now.. mine is silky smoothe overclocked it to 900mghz .. lol cheers :D

[tarek757]

yup thats the way, if you want a smooth playback for flash player use the native microB browser instead.. its better than firefox as of now.. mine is silky smoothe overclocked it to 900mghz .. lol cheers :D

Thank you very much Zaoltryence,It worked for me

Now i have another question....How can i download the streaming video from the youtube,or any other website to my n900?

[zaoltryence]

Thank you very much Zaoltryence,It worked for me

Now i have another question....How can i download the streaming video from the youtube,or any other website to my n900?
you can use zoutube from extras repo on the app manager for downloading videos from youtube

[shapeshifter]

Oh ok, sorry. Can you please point me towards APIs supported across all HTML5 browsers that support, in an interoperable fashion between graphics, text and 3D:
[... lots of features ...]

No?

Ah.


Well, two things:

A) I don't know a single Flash site that features some sort of application which incorporates any of the more "exclusive" features. 99% of what is Flash at the moment - mostly video streaming, games, and "configurators" of all sorts for comercial sites and products - can easily be reproduced in HTML5 and javascript without anything fancy. If HTML5 is an alternative, it should be chosen over Flash, that's what I'm saying, and this holds true in almost all cases.

B) I think you're underestimating how capable HTML5 + Javascript is. We're only at the beginning, and already are there many interesting demos and applications. Just a few examples:

A large collection of examples is here (best viewed in Chrome/Chromium):
http://www.chromeexperiments.com

Decomposing a html5 video:
http://www.craftymind.com/factory/html5video/CanvasVideo.html

A very nice space shooter:
http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/

Impressive normal mapping:
http://29a.ch/2010/3/24/normal-mapping-with-javascript-and-canvas-tag

A very nice fractal demo:
http://onecm.com/projects/canopy/

A 3D-Demo:
http://deanm.github.com/pre3d/colorscube.html

Depth of field:
http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/depth_of_field/ (don't try this in firefox)


--

You're probably thinking "Flash has been able to do any of this for a long time and quicker/better" and that might be true, but Flash has also been a pain in the butt for a long time, and in any case my two arguments remain. A) Almost anything made in the real world at the moment using Flash can be done in HTML5 + Javascript and B) Development is fast and powerful. An open standard with thousands of contributors quickly outgrows a puny technology like Flash.

As I said, if Flash is your tool of choice, you can stick with it, but in my opinion it's an abomination and has never given me anything but trouble. The linux version has been abysmal and still is lacking, and a closed standard for the web is unacceptable.

edit:
I forgot a slightly less relevant C): If you want to develop anything fancy, it should - imho - not be done in a browser anyway. If you're lazy and want to be cross platform, you can use Java. Or you can use python and be on a constant high while coding because it's just so god damn great. ;) Still, you can do awesome web design and interactivity in HTML5. Most of the extra functionality in Flash is unneccessary and do not outweight the horror it brought us for years.

[tarek757]

you can use zoutube from extras repo on the app manager for downloading videos from youtube

First of all i would like to thank for you making you tired..

But i wanted to ask if there is real player available for the n900..and if so,isn't the real player is suitable for downloading videos from youtube? keep in mind that the 1st. question is the main question..

thank you alot..

[devu]

Well, two things:

A) I don't know a single Flash site that features some sort of application which incorporates any of the more "exclusive" features. 99% of what is Flash at the moment - mostly video streaming, games, and "configurators" of all sorts for comercial sites and products - can easily be reproduced in HTML5 and javascript without anything fancy. If HTML5 is an alternative, it should be chosen over Flash, that's what I'm saying, and this holds true in almost all cases.


So check this out Flaemo (http://www.flaemo.com/test)

In many cases I agree with you even as Flash Developer but if you want to know my whole opinion check this subject please.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=51957 (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=51957)

For haXe and all its goodness I would rather abandon Adobe/Flash ship forever. You need to understand one thing. There is million flash developers on the market. This is something that matter. No matter what you thing about technology and how crap you think it is. Also because of limitation of the platform there is tone of good and very smart developers without programmer knowledge sometimes even better that no one with c++ or python. Some of them already porting their stuff to haXe as well.

This is one example http://lab.polygonal.de/ds/

And here why:
http://lab.polygonal.de/2009/12/11/updates-3/
http://lab.polygonal.de/

here is another example of famous in Flash world 3D engine
http://www.flashsandy.org/haxe
Guys already porting it to haXe.

Yes they still doing games and compiling them to swf. Playing in web browser, but using this same peace of code they can compile it to c++.

[shapeshifter]

I read through your lenghty post and I completely understand your point that there's a huge number of Flash developers who can produce good results in flash in a short period of time. HaXe seems like a good thing. With it, at least code isn't "lost" by only being able to run using Flash. Still, I defend my position that - if possible - something different to Flash should be chosen to develop a web application. HTML5 and Javascript offer good functionality with fancy effects and an overall feel that satisfies most purposes.

Especially when someone who *doesn't* know Flash goes around asking where to start, I recommend staying away from it. As I said, and as you said - there are lots of Flash developers and this is what they know best. This doesn't change the fact that the technology itself has been a pain in the butt for a long time, is closed (HaXe doesn't count as opening up the Flash standard), and is not a "sane" choice.

[zaoltryence]

you can use zoutube from extras repo on the app manager for downloading videos from youtube

no there aint any real player for n900, the native media player so far does everything the real player can do or even better without downloading youtube vids of couse, thats why there's an app called zoutube which works as ayoutube client for downloading its videos, take a look at app manager im sure it fits the deal :)

[slender]

.. but Flash has also been a pain in the butt for a long time....

Hmm I belong the big majority of users:
Windows xp and nowadays Win 7
Computers:
PM 1,5GHz 512Mb
P4 3GHz 1Gb
Su7300 1,3GHz Gb

Only problems with flash what i have had are releated to fck up advertisements and badly designed car/band/product pages. On the other hand Youtube (Huge huge impact on internet overall) and other video pages and also little games work flawlessly. And have for years. Same thing with many of my friends who see me as huge nerd, which I´m not when we are talking about real nerds who really know about different OS and coding.

My point. It has been really nice ride to me and to my friends so care to elaborate what do you mean by pain in ***. Pain in Stallmans ***? Do not even start about telling how flash sucks on Linux because actually there is reasonable reason for it and that reason is user base.

[slender]

Still, I defend my position that - if possible - something different to Flash should be chosen to develop a web application. HTML5 and Javascript offer good functionality with fancy effects and an overall feel that satisfies most purposes.

I would like to remember that even thought you could be smartest and cabable coder in the world and intelligent human being the only way this is going to go is by market. If flash is deployed on major share of computers and if it´s going to be accelerated and if devel-tools are made so easy that even brain-damaged 5-year-olds (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8723#c121) can use it. Ten success is probably quite evident. Saying that this is OS and gives you freedom to infinity to port it whatever and is good strategy means nothing when there is not enough developers. If you watched Adobes CEO interview where he discussed about Steves letter you will realize that they will keep pushing on making devel tools easier and give in future you way of porting stuff to different platforms.

Who knows if someday we do not anymore "need" flash but for near future it imo will lead on web apps.