Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Flash, designed for resource constrained mobile applications and portable electronic devices. Flash Lite developers/designers can create rich multimedia content like animations, cartoons, widgets, and games for mobile phones. Flash Lite 1.1 supports Flash 4 ActionScript, while Flash Lite 2.0 is compatible with Flash Player 7, and Flash Lite 3 is based on Flash 8. Flash Lite applications can be created either as standalone application or browser-based content. If a mobile phone has the Flash Lite standalone player, the content is played as a standalone application, otherwise it is played within the web browser in mobile phone.
When developing Flash Lite contents on your development computer, use Device Central, Adobe’s emulator tool for testing and previewing Flash Lite content. Adobe Device Central includes regularly updated mobile phone profiles that include detailed information on the mobile device’s screen size, performance, form factor specifications, and supported media types and device skins. When testing on your development computer is done, load the content to the phone and test it in the production environment. Adobe also provides a Contents Developer Kit (CDK) that provides developers with authoring guidelines on how to develop Flash applications for mobile phones.
With Flash Lite, Flash developers and designers can quickly and easily port their existing Flash content from the desktop environment to mobile phone environments and enter the growing mobile phone market.
The following lists the main advantages of Flash Lite:
- Cross-platform with wide extensibility
- Rapid development with Adobe Flash IDE
- Supports vector based graphics
- Ability to generate better user interfaces
- Easy conversion from desktop Flash content to mobile content
Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) provides a robust, flexible environment for applications running on mobile and other embedded devices—mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), TV set-top boxes, and printers. Java ME includes flexible user interfaces, robust security, built-in network protocols, and support for networked and offline applications that can be downloaded dynamically. Applications based on Java ME are portable across many devices, yet leverage each device's native capabilities.
The Java ME Platform is a truly open solution for building mobile applications. It comprises a number of specified components, which have been defined by the industry through the Java Community Process (JCP). Java ME is designed to provide portability of applications between platforms.
