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Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch touts Flash for mobile phones at the Adobe Max conference.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)SAN FRANCISCO--Inspired by a new generation of smartphones, Adobe Systems has begun a new, higher-power effort to spread its Flash technology to mobile devices.
The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones, but it now is working to bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to higher-end smartphones, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said at Adobe's Max conference here.
"We are in the midst of evolving Flash Player 10 for mobile," Lynch said. "We're taking the full Flash Player and making that run on the higher end of the mobile market."
Adobe naturally isn't the only company that wants to supply the plumbing for applications that run on mobile devices as well as PCs. Sun Microsystems has had some success spreading Java to mobile phones, and it's been working for months on a fancier alternative called JavaFX. And Microsoft, which also has legions of programmers familiar with its technology and development tools, is working hard on Windows Mobile.
Still no Flash for iPhone
Lynch demonstrated Flash Player 10 on devices running Nokia's Symbian operating system, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and Google's Android operating system. But the quintessential example of the new family of smartphones, Apple's iPhone, so far remains only on the wish list.
"This needs a little more baking. We need to pass the taste test of Apple's head chef," Lynch said as he retrieved an iPhone from a pan full of mobile devices, turning enthusiastic whistles and cheering from a crowd of thousands into a disappointed hubbub. But Adobe is working on it, he said.
Naturally, nobody from Apple shared the stage with Lynch. Google Android leader Andy Rubin, by contrast, made an appearance after Lynch's demonstration of Flash on a T-Mobile G1, the first phone powered by Google's mobile operating system.
That Adobe was able to bring its software to Android affirms Google's strategy of building an "open platform (intended) to give a better Internet experience on cell phones," Rubin said. "Today, seeing Flash 10 makes me feel really warm. It was exactly what Android was built for."
Flash is used for YouTube's streaming video, and Lynch demonstrated a Windows Mobile phone playing a video hosted on the Google service. (The iPhone can show YouTube videos, too, but only after they've been transcoded into a different streaming format.)
Fresh AIR
Flash got its start as a Macromedia technology that could give Web sites animation and basic games. Adobe acquired Macromedia and embraced its vision of turning Flash into a much fuller computing foundation. One key to that foundation is what's called AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime, a downloadable software package that lets people run Flash applications outside the browser and when offline.
The New York Times is working on an AIR application that will let people read the International Herald Tribune in a format that looks more like newspaper and less like a Web page. It includes keyboard navigation controls, a browsing mode for the equivalent of flipping through the paper, a crossword that could be filled out, and video advertisements.
The application checks for new content every few minutes, but it can be used offline, too, with the stories and photos that already have been downloaded, said Michael Zimbalist, vice president of research and development at the Times.
Adobe released AIR 1.5 Monday, a version that inherits Flash Player 10 abilities such as better text rendering, support for right-to-left text scripts such as Arabic, multichannel audio, and 3D effects.
Like Flash, AIR is headed for the mobile world. Lynch also demonstrated AIR 1.5 running on a Linux-based Aigo miniature computer--what Intel likes to call a MID, or mobile Internet device. It was using an Intel Atom processor, and the same New York Times application ran on it.
Making Flash Lite easier
Although Adobe has elevated the status of the full Flash Player 10 on mobile devices, it's still working on Flash Lite.
Lynch acknowledged that it's hard to actually run Flash content with existing technology. Now, though, Flash Lite applications can be shared as a simple Web address, he said, and if Flash Lite isn't installed, it can be retrieved automatically.
"You can package your application built with Flash and deploy it to smartphones like Windows Mobile and Symbian, and we hope to get to Android as well," Lynch said. "If you don't already have Flash Lite, it will detect that and install it on your mobile phone over the air."
Flash includes auto-update technology so users generally have a current version installed, and Adobe plans to keep that philosophy with its push into the mobile realm, he added. Partners to help enable that update process include Cisco Systems, NTT DoCoMo, Verizon, Comcast, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Qualcomm, and ARM.
Lynch also boasted that Adobe is exceeding its goals for Flash on mobile phones.
"Our goal (was to make) a billion phones Flash-enabled by 2010," Lynch said. "We're actually going to get 1 billion Flash-enabled phones by 2009."
Starting to answer the clamorous demand from open-source fans, Adobe Systems plans to release an alpha version of its Flash Player technology on Monday for those using 64-bit Linux software.
Linux has moved more rapidly than Windows or Mac OS X to support 64-bit processors, in part because the developer-friendly compile-your-own-software ethos that prevails makes it easier for the technically savvy to make the switch. But one of the obstacles in the switch is that people could only use the 32-bit Flash plug-in, which meant that they only could use the 32-bit version of Firefox.
The company plans to release the software at its Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.
The 64-bit support will arrive on other operating systems later, Adobe said, but Linux fans get it first because they were the most vocal in their desire for it.
"Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering on Adobe's plans to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms," Adobe said in a statement. "We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. With this prelease, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future releases. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward."
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Adobe Systems wants to have it both ways.
Microsoft's power with programmers is tethered to desktops and laptops, the vast majority of which run Windows. Google is trying to dominate what it believes is the new frontier, cloud computing, where applications run on the Web. Adobe, though, is trying to run down the middle with a strategy that touches on both domains.
"It's a balance of the client and cloud together that makes for the most effective applications and the best development," said Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, who's planning to speak on the subject in a keynote speech Monday at the company's Max conference in San Francisco.
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Since Adobe's $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005, programming technology has been rising in importance within a company that got its start with publishing software such as Photoshop. The technology that brought the two companies together, Flash, will hog the spotlight at the conference.
Flash got its start as a way to give Web pages animations and basic applications such as games, but it's grown up since then. The Flex technology has given developers a more mature programming model, and the addition of video-streaming abilities to the Flash Player that's plugged into the vast majority of Web browsers has given Adobe's technology incumbent status. Who can live online without YouTube?
Adobe is still working on Flash, releasing Flash Player 10, aka Astro, in October. At Max, though, a Flash cousin called AIR--the Adobe Integrated Runtime--will share the stage with the release of version 1.5.
Flash and AIR are key to bridging the cloud-PC gap. For example, Adobe has launched an online Photoshop.com service, where members can upload, edit, and share photos. The site uses Flash to run the processing-intensive editing software on people's own computers, not Adobe's servers, Lynch said.
"Our operational costs for hosting that application are much lower than if we had server-side processing," and users get better performance, Lynch said.
But Flash still lives largely within the browser. Adobe hopes to uproot it with AIR, a "runtime" foundation for housing applications. AIR runs Flash programs but also has a built-in engine for showing Web pages and for running programs written in JavaScript, which is widely used for Web-based applications. And AIR is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and programmers who write AIR applications don't have to worry about what operating system is on a person's computer.
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