Kuneri bloggy

Usually, when new version of a software is released, we cheer, considering things will get better and easier. As we were expecting things would be easier for developers, we cheered up for Flash Lite 3.0’s features, however that couldn’t be more than wrong and it turned out to be a big pain for us. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be any short term solution, and no one guarantees there will be one in mid or long term. I would like to write my reasons why I think so, and warn Adobe, Nokia and developers for a potential threat, which will not be long to come.

Security Sandbox Pain (or Security Painbox)

Flash Lite 3.0 came with Flash 8 engine, and together with Security Sandbox ‘feature’. This might make sense for browser plugin, but doesn’t make any sense for standalone player. Nick has a really nice post about this issue, which is almost 1 year old, can give an idea about the past and future of the problem.

Ok, what’s wrong with ‘Security Sandbox’? Isn’t security something good? Well, security is good when it’s used in convenience. If you use security for a case where doesn’t make any sense or bring an added value, you end up making life difficult for developers and users. Problem about this new Security Sandbox is; you either can have a local connection (i.e loading local files), or can a network connection (i.e connect to internet). This ‘feature’ not only brought an unnecessary pain to us (developers), but also broke backwards compatibility. How? Simple: If you have a Flash Lite 1.x or 2.x movie using local and network connections at the same time, it simply won’t work on Flash Lite 3.0 (which means new phones like N95). Wasn’t the biggest problem on mobile world fragmentation?

Problems not only end with those on ‘Security Sandbox’ feature. It’s not possible to do localhost calls, which disables any connection from Flash Lite to outer world. Why is this something bad? Well, there are many 3rd party projects extending Flash Lite via localhost (the only way left to us, because 3rd party application launch is limited by Nokia), such as KuneriLite, Flyer and Janus. These projects help Flash Lite to expand beyond its capabilities and enable people to create richer applications, which can compete with native S60 applications in look and performance.

Luckily, there is a ‘best of worst’ trick that solves those problems. There is a magic folder in ‘C:\data\others\trusted’ (that’s another pain, I will come to that shortly), which disables ‘Security Sandbox’ and enables applications to communicate both with local and network, as well as localhost. Why is this a ‘best of worst’? Simply because whatever you put into this directory is visible under ‘Gallery’ which brings a very bad user experience and many security concenrs within.

This issue will be even more cronic, if Adobe or Nokia doesn’t make any move; because ‘trusted’ folder will not be available anymore for S60 3.2 devices. Which will kill all developer efforts and backwards compatibility forever. We are not sure if Adobe or Nokia will solve this problem, but crossing our fingers hoping someone sees our S.O.S fire.

Trusted Folder Pain

I mentioned Security Sandbox problem and a ‘best of worst’ solution to that above. Now see another pain closely related to this subject.

S60 devices have ‘Phone Memory’ (PM) and ‘Memory Card’ (MC). Users are given the option to install their applications to PM or MC. As you know, to solve Securiy Sandbox problem, we need to install Flash Lite applications to those ‘Trusted’ folders that exist both on PM and MC. So what is the problem? With a clever(!) move, ‘Trusted’ folder is located at different paths on PM and MC. It’s at C:\Data\Others\Trusted\ on PM and E:\Others\Trusted\ on MC. Yeah, but what is the problem? Well simply, it’s not possible to install applications (SIS packages) to different folders on PM and MC, and this breaks Symbian Signed criterias. So, Flash Lite 3.0 applications either will work on PM, or MC. And in that way, you can not get your appliction Symbian Signed.

There is no solution we could find for that yet. If we can not; it will not be possible for anyone to Symbian Sign their Flash Lite applications on Flash Lite 3.0 phones (from my current understanding).

XML Socket Pain

Well, Security Sandbox is not the only problem. There is a serious bug on Flash Lite 3.0 with XML sockets. Simply put, it’s not possible to receive data via XML socket shorter than 1+ seconds, which kills if you need to stream data.

Most clear example for that is using KuneriLite Accelerometer plugin with Flash Lite. Naturally, to use axis values, you need to get those values at least 4-5 times per second; so that you can reflect it to your application. But because of this bug, you can get data only 1 time or less per second, which makes it impossible to use.

See the this Forum Nokia thread for more information on that subject. And as far as we see, there is no solution offered yet.

Conclusion

I tried to state my reasons, why Flash Lite 3.0 is a potential show-stopper for developers, users, enablers and many more on S60 devices. Nokia keeps on spreading this problem via Firmware updates and pushing Flash Lite 3.0 player to earlier phones (i.e Nokia N95 Classic), supporting and triggering fragmentation. With the introduction of S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 devices, these problems will be impossible to solve and Flash Lite player will get fragmented at least for couple of years, which will delay market entrance that is already delayed for long time and still immature. What I would like to see is some action from Adobe and Nokia, leaning on this subject and listening to us to avoid a big potential problem awaiting all Flash Lite users and developers in short term.

Please leave me your comments if you have any.

cheers,

Ugur.-

I just found a simple diagram I prepared for a common question: Can I develop my own plugins for KuneriLite?

Answer is “No” at the moment, but there is a simple way to use KuneriLite System plugin and communicate your application with your Flash Lite movie using KuneriLite. Check the diagram below.

There has been a wave of news originating from Anand’s post lately about Flash Lite 3.1 made available for OEMs. *Personally* I don’t see this as a big news, due it’s for OEMs, and I don’t see any large scale OEM to go for that, due most of them already licensed Flash Lite from Adobe: No big impact for Flash Lite developers.

Today Mark Doherty (Manager of Developer Relations at Adobe Mobile and Devices - EMEA) provided official(?) details about upcoming Flash Lite 3.1 and its features. According to Mark; Flash Lite 3.1 does not offer big difference, but some improvements like;

• Improved Web Browsing, 91% of top 500 internet sites.
• Flash 9 (AS2 only) support
• Local Connection / HTML Text / GetURL_target / CSS support / WMode
• H.264 support / Improved video support (smoothing, seek)
• Improved memory handling for images
• MP3 Streaming support
• Linux Reference port

Looking forward to see first S60 FP2 device shipped and test Flash Lite 3.1. And thanks to Mark for providing us details.

Bill posted a really great resource: Flash Lite market percentage (as of January 2008). Those numbers are from U.S and Western Europe and give quite good impression of the target market in those selected regions. Listed numbers include Nokia S60, Nokia Series 40, Sony Ericsson and BREW. It’s especially great to see the numbers of devices separately for each platform as well. I always thought UK had the most S60 devices in Europe, however it’s clear that Italy is the leader.

Today, we are proud to announce the availability of KISS60 Beta 0.9! We have been working hard to make it exceptionally good looking, highly functional and pleasant to use. New version of KISS60 is one of the best examples, exposing the potential of our innovative platform KuneriLite and demonstrating the next generation S60 User Experience. Now you can enjoy Flash Lite screensavers on your S60 device even more and easily manage them using our software.

KISS60 is also a great potential for content aggregators, advertisers and screensaver developers. It enables Flash Lite content on 20% more devices, increasing content availability and boosting revenues. KISS60 has a very flexible content download system, that can be integrated into any kind of payment system or distribution channel. Furthermore, availability of many free screensavers makes it a very powerful advertising platform.

Some feature highlights;

- Interactive S60 UI with Flash Lite
- Enable Flash Lite screensavers on your S60 phone
- Easily manage your screensavers
- Simply download free screensavers from free KISS60 gallery
- Share KISS60 and your screensavers with other S60 and Series 40 phones
- Set up screensaver timeout and backlight duration

If you are in Mobile World Congress, just drop by to Adobe stand and learn more about KuneriLite and KISS60 from us. If not, stay tuned to our blog for latest news and enjoy KISS60 in your hands.

Guys behind Joiku, our distribution and promotional partner, have done a great job and brought a new innovation to S60 world. Meet JoikuSpot; a free, instant and easy way to turn your S60 smartphone into a portable Wi-Fi router!

JoikuSpot is a free mobile software solution that turns Nokia Smartphones to WLAN HotSpots.

JoikuSpot software is installed directly to the phone. When switched on, laptops and ipods can establish instant and fast wireless internet connection via smartphone’s JoikuSpot access point using phone’s own 3G internet connection.

Multiple devices can connect to JoikuSpot in parallel and seamlessly share the same 3G internet connection. JoikuSpot acts thus as an internet gateway to external WLAN devices.

Some Flash Lite developers have been wishing Adobe to let developers to embed Flash Lite player with their products (there is even petition).

Its not going to happen, for various reasons, one you can see below, if you stand some nerd language:

In S60 phone models embedding (embed SIS into SIS install file) can (would) be used to provide common frameworks or game engines within applications.

However, embedding SIS does not work much at all in S60 3rd edition phones, because 3rd platform suffers severe bug, which ruins the method completely:

If you embed SIS into your application (for instance FL player) you should define dependency to embedded SIS into applications using it, to avoid uninstallation of embedded product, when some of the applications is uninstalled.

This just does not work in S60 3rd edition.

Example: If user installs application A which come with embedded file x. Then user installs app B using embedded x. When user uninstalls A, also embedded file will be removed!

Actually it is not possible to provide other file types either, to be used commonly for applications, due problematic S60 uninstallation behaviour.

So you won’t see many common players, frameworks, engines around for S60 platform, which you could integrate within your product, except having customized solution instead.

Soon in your nearest internet connected device :) See power of Flash Lite on KISS60 with KuneriLite.

Forum Nokia has launched a new competition for S60 developers. There will be a new programming challenge on a monthly basis and best solutions will be awarded:

Problem for January

S60 supports multiple different runtimes and programming languages. The aim of this month’s competition is to come up with a way to combine different runtimes.

We are asking you to design and implement a framework that unifies S60 runtimes. The goal is intercommunication of runtimes (for example Symbian C++, Java, Flash, Python, Web Runtimes, you name it). With this kind of runtime interaction it is possible to access new features and re-use existing solutions in a manner that is unheard of. Provide us with your framework implementation and also at least one working example of runtimes interworking. If you don’t have time to implement all the necessary parts - let us know your ideas and planned design to score more points in the contest.

The January’s competition is open until 15th of February (15.2.2008) and we hope to have the best solutions published by the end of February.

..

Some shameless promotion of our products here:

About frameworks, KuneriLite framework which unifies pure Symbian C++ and Flash Lite, is based on HTTP protocol, giving unlimited access from Flash Lite to S60 features with simple API.
Developer is able to create real S60 application, using powers of Flash Lite in UI development and utilize smartphone features, without thinking of implementatation for platform, in this case for Symbian OS.

When developing on top of KuneriLite framework, it is possible to create hybrid application mixing Flash Lite, Symbian C++ and even Open C runtime modules!

Porting existing C-implementation to S60 environment is dramatically faster, than creating complete Symbian version..

HTTP protocol allows to spread the development to different areas, like using J2ME for development, but there the functionality is limited and access to S60 features is pretty constrained.

We are publishing new release soon with new features!

We uploaded a sneak preview of next KISS60 version on YouTube. Most significant improvement is the new User Interface which is pure Flash Lite 1.1 (works much faster on real device than the video). Behind the scenes, there is a robust architecture powered by KuneriLite 0.9.4.

There are also some new features in next version. Now it’s possible to define screensaver timeout and backlight durations. It’s also easier to integrate your existing Flash Lite screensavers, in the new version.

We expect it to be ready at the end of this month and planning to make the first release in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. If you are going there, don’t forget to visit us;)