Page 1 Developing Flash Lite 2.x Applications...
Page 2 Nellymoser, Inc.: Speech compression and decompression technology licensed by Nellymoser, Inc. (http:www.nellymoser.com). Opera ® browser Copyright © 1995-2002 Opera Software ASA and its suppliers. All rights reserved. Macromedia Flash 8 video is powered by On2 TrueMotion video technology. © 1992-2005 On2 Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.on2.com.
Page 3: Table Of Contents
Contents Chapter 1: Flash Lite 2.x Overview ......5 About Flash Lite 2.0 features ........5 Flash Lite 2.0 new features .
Page 4 Chapter 6: Testing Flash Lite Content (Flash Professional Only) ....... . . 81 Overview of Flash Lite testing features (Flash Professional only) .
Page 5: Chapter 1: Flash Lite 2.X Overview
CHAPTER 1 Flash Lite 2.x Overview Macromedia Flash Lite 2.0 is a version of Flash Player designed for devices. Flash Lite 2.0 is based on Flash Player 7 and supports most—but not all—features in Flash Player 7. Flash Lite 2.0 also includes features specific to mobile development that are not available in Flash Player 7.
Page 6: Flash Lite 2.0 New Features
Flash Lite 2.0. For more information about available ActionScript, see Introduction to Flash Lite ActionScript 2.x. Socket communication using the XMLSocket class ■ Support for communication with Macromedia Flash Media Server ■ Remote shared objects (local shared objects are partially supported) ■...
Page 7 For example, if the device supports the PNG file format, MovieClip.loadMovie() then you could use the following code to load a PNG file from a web server into the movie clip instance image_mc: image_mc.loadMovie("http://www.macromedia.com/images/mobile.png"); Flash Lite 2.0 new features...
Page 8 The Flash Lite 2.0 implementation of shared objects does not allow multiple SWF files to share the same data. Also, Flash Lite 2.0 does not support remote shared objects with Macromedia Flash Media Server. Synchronized device sound In previous versions of Flash Lite you could only synchronize native Flash sound to animation in the timeline.
Page 9: About Components In Flash Lite 2.0
Accordion) were designed for use in Flash desktop applications. The memory requirements and processing power that they require typically prohibit their use in Flash Lite 2.0 applications. Macromedia recommends that you don’t use the standard user interface components in your Flash Lite applications.
Page 10 Flash Lite 2.x Overview...
Page 11: Chapter 2: Creating Interactivity And Navigation
Creating Interactivity and Navigation To interact with your Macromedia Flash Lite application, a user must be able to determine which object on the screen currently has focus, navigate among objects, and initiate an action by selecting an object or another key. While these basic principles are the same as for desktop applications, some of the functionality varies for mobile devices.
Page 12: Keys Supported By Flash Lite
Keys supported by Flash Lite In addition to the alphanumeric keys available on standard telephones, most mobile devices feature a navigation keypad, which let users navigate and select items on the device screen, and two (or more) soft keys. A device’s soft keys are multifunctional keys that use the screen to identify their purpose at any moment.
Page 13: Using Default Navigation In Flash Lite
Description Keys Availability SOFT3 - SOFT12 keys Devices that have more than two soft keys Keyboard keys !, “, #, $, %, &, ‘, (, ), *, +, ,, -, ., Devices that have a QWERTY /, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, :, ;, keyboard <, +, >, ?, @, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R,...
Page 14 Default navigation modes Flash Lite supports three modes of default navigation: two-way, four-way, and four-way with wraparound. Different devices and Flash Lite content types support different navigation modes. For information on determining the navigation mode for a specific device and content type, see “Flash Lite platform capabilities (Flash Professional only)”...
Page 15 Four-way navigation in Flash Lite is similar to using the arrow keys on a desktop computer’s keyboard to navigate among objects on the screen. The device’s up, down, left, and right navigation keys correspond to the four arrow keys on a computer’s keyboard. Pressing a navigation key moves the keypad focus to the object located in that direction, if one exists.
Page 16 To use each sample file, open it in Flash and test it in the emulator (select Control > Test Movie). Click the arrow keys on the emulator’s keypad (or press the arrow keys on your keyboard) to see how each navigation mode affects user navigation. Array of buttons in sample file About the focus rectangle By default, Flash Lite draws a yellow rectangle around the button or input text field that has...
Page 17 Guidelines for using default navigation The following are guidelines and considerations for using default navigation in your Flash Lite applications. If you disable the default focus rectangle by setting , be sure to ■ _focusRect false provide an alternative focus indicator for your buttons, input text fields, and tab-enabled movie clips.
Page 18 Customizing the focus rectangle The focus rectangle is a default yellow highlight that indicates which button or input text box is currently selected. Movie clips are also included if their property is set to tabEnabled true or if they have event handlers associated with them and their property is not set tabEnabled .
Page 19 With the text field still selected, in the Property inspector, select Input Text from the Text Type pop-up menu, type inputTxt_1 in the Instance Name text box, and select the Show Border Around Text option. In the same manner, create another input text field below the first one with the instance name of inputTxt_2 and select the Show Border Around Text option for the second text field.
Page 20: Handling Key And Button Events (Flash Professional Only)
About controlling tab order in two-way navigation Two-way navigation in Flash Lite is analogous to tab navigation in Flash, and therefore supports the property that allows you to specifically set the tab order of buttons, tabIndex movie clips, and input text fields. On devices that support four-way navigation, the tabIndex property is not supported, so it’s not possible to set tab order using the property for...
Page 21 Handling button events (Flash Professional only) You can use buttons to quickly add interactivity to your Flash Lite applications. Flash Lite supports the same button events as Flash Player on desktop computers, although some events (for example, ) are only available on devices that have a mouse or stylus interface. onDragOut On devices that have a keypad interface only, a button must have keypad focus before it will generate any events.
Page 22 Select Window > Common Libraries > Buttons to open an external library of prebuilt button symbols. In the Library panel, double-click the classic buttons folder to open it, and then open the Circle Buttons folder. Drag an instance of the Menu button symbol to the Stage. In the Property inspector, in the Instance Name text box, type btn_1.
Page 23 Test the application in the emulator (Control > Test Movie). Watch the messages in the Output panel as you press the up and down arrow keys on the emulator’s keypad. Other types of objects support different events; for example, the object includes TextField event that is invoked when the content of a text field changes.
Page 24 To create a simple menu using buttons: Open the file named simple_menu_start.fla, which is located in the Samples and Tutorials/ Samples/Flash Lite 2.0/ folder in the Flash installation folder on your computer. Open the Library panel (Window > Library). Notice that the Library contains three button symbols named News Button, Weather Button, and Sports Button.
Page 25 With the new text field still selected, do the following in the Property inspector: Select Dynamic Text from the Text Type pop-up menu. Type txt_status in the Instance Name text box. The Stage should look something like the following image: In the Timeline, select Frame 1 in the layer named ActionScript.
Page 26 Select Control > Test Movie to preview the application in the emulator. Click the down arrow key on the emulator with your mouse (or press the down arrow key on your computer’s keyboard) to navigate between menu options; to select a menu item, click the emulator’s select key by using your mouse (or press the Enter key on your computer’s keyboard).
Page 27 The following table lists commonly used device keys and the corresponding ActionScript key codes and key code constants for those keys: Device key ActionScript key code/key code constant Select key Key.ENTER Up navigation key Key.UP Down navigation key Key.DOWN Left navigation key Key.LEFT Right navigation key Key.RIGHT...
Page 28 Writing an event listener Event listeners let an object, called a listener object, receive events broadcast by another object, called a broadcaster object. The broadcaster object registers the listener object to receive events generated by the broadcaster. For more information, see “Using event listeners” in Learning ActionScript 2.x in Flash.
Page 29 Open the Actions panel (Window > Actions), and enter the following code: var myListener:Object = new Object(); myListener.onKeyDown = function() { if (Key.getCode() == Key.LEFT) { circle._x -= 10; } else if (Key.getCode() == Key.RIGHT) { circle._x += 10; } else if (Key.getCode() == Key.UP) { circle._y -= 10;...
Page 30 The following example shows the result of using this command in an application running on an actual device in normal (not full-screen) mode: Available screen area in non-full-screen applications Soft key labels displayed by device If you enable full-screen mode—that is, if you call —the fscommand("fullscreen", true) labels that you specify as parameters to the...
Page 31 Create another static text field named Right, and position it in the lower-right corner of the Stage, above the right soft key on the device. Using the Text tool, create a dynamic text field, and position it in the middle of the Stage. Your document’s Stage should look like the following example: Dynamic text field Soft key labels...
Page 32 Select Control > Test Movie to test the application in the emulator. To test the application, click the left and right soft keys on the emulator with your mouse, or press the Page Up and Page Down keys on your keyboard. Creating Interactivity and Navigation...
Page 33: Chapter 3: Working With Text And Fonts
Working with Text and Fonts This chapter describes how you can add static and dynamic text fields and add input text fields to your Macromedia Flash Lite applications. This chapter contains the following topics: About text in Flash Lite ........... . 33 Creating and formatting text .
Page 34: Creating And Formatting Text
Partial support for HTML formatting and the TextFormat class properties ■ Scrolling text ■ Flash Lite does not support all the text features that are in the desktop version of Flash Player. Flash Lite has the following limitations: FlashType, the enhanced font rendering technology available in Flash Player 8 and later, is ■...
Page 35: Using Input Text Fields
By default, Flash Lite draws a yellow rectangle around the input text field that has focus. (If you disable the focus rectangle, Macromedia recommends that you create an alternative focus indicator. For more information about customizing the focus rectangle, see “About the focus rectangle”...
Page 36 The Flash Lite emulator mimics the features of the text input dialog box when you test your application in the Flash authoring tool. The following image shows the text input dialog box running in the emulator: ‘ Text input dialog box running in the emulator For an example of using an input text field in an application, see “Text field example...
Page 37 For example, when a user edits a single line input text field, the device’s input text dialog box displays a single line input text box. The input text box scrolls horizontally if the user enters more characters than can be displayed. The following image shows a device’s input text dialog box for a single line input text field: When a user edits a multiline input text field, the device’s input text dialog box expands as necessary to display all the text the user enters, as the following image shows:...
Page 38: Font Rendering Methods In Flash Lite
Restricting character input You can use the command to restrict the characters that the user can SetInputTextType enter in the text input dialog box. For example, suppose an application contains an input text field for users to provide a numeric value, such as their age. Furthermore, suppose that the input text field has the variable name .
Page 39 To select a font rendering method for a text field: Select a text field on the Stage. In the Property inspector, select one of the following options from the Font Rendering Method pop-up menu: Select Use Device Fonts to have Flash Lite use a font that is available on the device. No ■...
Page 40 Anti-aliased text in Flash Lite is, essentially, a complex vector shape. Like any vector shape, ■ it takes some processing power to render. Because processing speed on most devices is relatively slow, animating a lot of anti-aliased text may degrade application performance. To improve performance, try temporarily lowering the Flash Lite player’s rendering quality during the animation, and then returning it to the higher rendering quality when the animation is complete.
Page 41 Embedding font outlines in SWF files To render a text field’s font, Flash Lite can either use fonts that are available on the device or use font outlines that are embedded in the published SWF file (see “Font rendering methods in Flash Lite”...
Page 42: Text Field Example Application (Flash Professional Only)
Click the Embed button located next to the Font Rendering Method menu to open the Character Embedding dialog box. Select the characters you want to embed from the list, type the characters that you want to embed in the text box, or click Auto Fill to include the characters that are in the selected text field.
Page 43 To create the text field example application: In Flash, create a new document from the Flash Lite 2.0 Generic template that you created earlier (see “Creating a Flash Lite document template (Flash Professional only)” in Getting Started with Flash Lite 2.x), and save it as textfield.fla. Using the Text tool in the Tools panel, create a single-line text field across the top of the Stage.
Page 44: Creating Scrolling Text (Flash Professional Only)
To use the application, press the emulator’s select key to open the text input dialog box and enter some text using your computer’s keyboard. Then click OK to close the dialog box. The text that you entered appears in the text field in italics.
Page 45 Select Use Device Fonts from the Font Rendering Method pop-up menu in the Property inspector. Select Text > Scrollable to make the text field scrollable. Type story in the Instance Name text box in the Property inspector. Double-click inside the text field, and enter enough text so that one or more lines of text extend below its lower edge.
Page 46 Working with Text and Fonts...
Page 47: Chapter 4: Working With Sound, Video, And Images
Images This chapter describes how to incorporate sound, video, and external images in your Macromedia Flash Lite application. This chapter contains the following topics: About sound in Flash Lite ..........47 Using device sound (Flash Professional only) .
Page 48: Using Device Sound (Flash Professional Only)
Using device sound (Flash Professional only) Device sounds refer to audio that is played directly by the device, rather than by the Flash Lite player. Different devices may support different sound formats, including MIDI, MFi, or MP3. To incorporate device sounds in your Flash Lite content you can either include them within your published SWF file, or load external sound files over the network or from the device’s local file system.
Page 49 To import and play a device sound: Create a new document from the Flash Lite 2.0 Symbian Series 60 document template, and save it as device_sound.fla. For more information about using the Flash Lite document templates, see “Creating a Flash Lite document template (Flash Professional only)” in Getting Started with Flash Lite 2.x.
Page 50 (Optional) To control the device sound with ActionScript, click Advanced to display the advanced sound properties options, select Export for ActionScript, and type device_sound in the Identifier text box. Click OK to close the Sound Properties dialog box. To play the device sound, you can either attach the proxy sound to the Timeline or use the ActionScript sound object.
Page 51 As of this writing, the Sound Bundler utility is supported by Windows systems only. To create a sound bundle file: Open the Flash Lite Sound Bundler application (FlashLiteBundler.exe) located in the Flash 8 installation folder (for example, boot drive/Program Files/Macromedia/Flash 8/ FlashLiteBundler.exe). Using device sound (Flash Professional only)
Page 52 From your desktop, drag the first sound file to be bundled into the Sound Bundler window. Another window appears that lists the contents of the sound bundle. The lower part of the window contains information about the sounds in the sound bundle, including sound format, size of sound data, and filename.
Page 53 = new Sound(); // Define onLoad handler for sound, // which starts the sound once it has fully loaded. mySound.onLoad = function(success){ if(success == true) { mySound.start(); // Load the sound. mySound.loadSound("http://www.macromedia.com/audio.midi"); Using device sound (Flash Professional only)
Page 54 About synchronizing device sounds with animation Device sounds in Flash Lite are always treated as event sounds. This means that you can’t synchronize device sounds with animation in the timeline in the same manner that you can with native Flash sounds. However, you can use device sounds to approximate true synchronized sound by setting the Flash Lite player’s property to _forceframerate...
Page 55: Using Native Flash Sounds
Using native Flash sounds In addition to supporting device sound, Flash Lite 2.0 also supports standard, or native, Flash sounds. Essentially, a native sound is a sound in any format that the Flash authoring tool recognizes. Native sound in Flash Lite can play either as event sound or synchronized sound (see “Using device sound (Flash Professional only)”...
Page 56 The first procedure that follows explains how to enable the 8kHz sampling rate option for individual sounds in the Sound Properties dialog box; the second procedure explains how to use the Publish Settings dialog box to set this option globally for all event and stream sounds. For stream sounds, Flash always applies the global sound compression options that you specify in the Publish Settings dialog box.
Page 57 To enable the 8kHz sampling rate feature globally for all native sounds: In Flash Professional 8, select File > Publish Settings. In the Publish Settings dialog box, click the Flash tab. To enable the 8kHz sampling rate for all stream sounds in your application, do the following: Click Set Stream sound options.
Page 58: Using Device Video
Using device video Flash Lite 2.0 can play device video, which refers to any video format or encoding that’s supported by the target device. To keep player size small (and to support a wide variety of video formats), Flash Lite 2.0 does not decode or render device video natively. Instead, Flash Lite 2.0 relies on the device to decode and render device video to the device’s display.
Page 59 Bundling device video in a SWF file can add significantly to the size of your published SWF file, but it provides the best portability and playback reliability, because no external files need to open or stream. This section contains the following topics: “Importing device video”...
Page 60 To import a device video by using the Library panel: In Flash, open the Library panel (Window > Library). Open the Library options menu and choose New Video. The Video Properties dialog box appears. In the Video Properties dialog box, select the option to bundle the source video in the SWF file, then click Import.
Page 61 Import the device video file named ocean.3gp located in the Samples and Tutorials/ Samples/Flash Lite 2.0/Video/ folder in the Flash Professional 8 installation folder on your hard disk. For more information about importing a device video, see “Importing device video” on page A new video symbol appears in the Library panel.
Page 62 Drag an instance of the Play button symbol from the Buttons library to the Stage. Drag an instance of the Stop button symbol from the Buttons library to the Stage. Select the Play button on the Stage and open the Actions panel (Window > Actions). Type (or copy and paste) the following code into the Actions panel: on(press) { myVideo.play();...
Page 63 You then create another placeholder video symbol and add an instance of it to the Stage. To use the placeholder video to play the device video in the library, you pass the symbol’s ActionScript identifier to the method, as the following example shows: Video.play() placeHolderVideo.play("symbol://ocean_video");...
Page 64 To create the placeholder video clip, do the following: In the Library panel, click the options menu button in the panel’s title bar and select New Video. The Video Properties dialog box appears. In the Symbol text box, type videoHolder. Click OK to close the Video Properties dialog box.
Page 65 You can also load a video file from a network address, as follows: myVideo.play("http://www.macromedia.com/video/ocean.3gp"); Viewing and editing device video symbol properties The Video Properties dialog box lets you view and edit information for video symbols in the Library panel.
Page 66 To import a device video into a video symbol: Select a video symbol in the Library panel and open the Video Properties dialog box. In the Video Properties dialog box, select the option to bundle the video source in the SWF file, if it’s not already selected.
Page 67 For example, the following code displays in a TextField object named all of mimeTypes_txt the video MIME types that the device supports: var mimeTypes = System.capabilities.videoMIMETypes; mimeTypes_txt.text = mimeTypes.toString(); The indices for the items contained in the array System.capabilities.videoMIMEtypes are equal to the supported device video MIME types. This provides a quick way to test whether a device supports a particular video format.
Page 68: Loading External Images
For example, assuming that the target device can decode PNG files, the following code loads and displays an external PNG file that resides on the web server: loadMovie("http://www.macromedia.com/image.png", "image_target"); To determine what image formats the target device supports, you can use the property, which contains an array of supported System.capabilities.imageMIMETypes...
Page 69 In this case, only the first five images (image1.jpg through image5.jpg) will load; the last image (image6.jpg) will not load because the five connection limit is reached. One solution is to split the calls over multiple frames so that each frame contains a maximum of loadMovie() five calls.
Page 70 Working with Sound, Video, and Images...
Page 71: Chapter 5: Optimizing Content For Performance And Memory
Performance and Memory Mobile devices typically have much less available memory and processing power than desktop computers. This chapter provides tips and techniques for optimizing your Macromedia Flash Lite content for file size and performance. This chapter contains the following topics: Performance optimization .
Page 72 Animation guidelines When creating animated content for a mobile phone, it is important to consider the phone’s CPU limitations. The following guidelines can help prevent your Flash Lite content from running slowly: Flash Lite can render vector graphics in your application at three different quality levels: ■...
Page 73 Vector graphics are compactly described in SWF files as mathematical equations, and then rendered at runtime by the Flash Lite player. In contrast, bitmap graphics are represented as arrays of picture elements (pixels), which require more bytes of data to describe. Therefore, using vector graphics in your application can help keep file size and application memory usage down.
Page 74 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the bitmap’s icon in the Library window, and select Properties from the context menu to open the Bitmap Properties dialog box. In the Compression pop-up menu, select one of the following options: Select the Photo (JPEG) option for images with complex color or tonal variations, ■...
Page 75: Device Speed And Frames Per Second
Flash Lite player runs. During development, Macromedia recommends that you set the document’s framerate to best match the playback speed on the target device. This gives you an idea of how your content will run on an actual device with limited performance.
Page 76: Optimizing Actionscript Performance
Optimizing ActionScript performance Because of the processing speed and memory limitations on most mobile devices, use the following guidelines when you develop ActionScript for Flash Lite content used on mobile phones: Keep the ActionScript as simple as possible. ■ Limit the number of loops that you use and the amount of code that each loop contains. ■...
Page 77 If ActionScript code that executes on a keyframe in the timeline requires more than 1 ■ second to complete, consider splitting up that code to execute over multiple keyframes. Remove statements from your code when you publish the SWF file. To do this, ■...
Page 78 Although you cannot control how and when Flash Lite performs garbage collection, you can still free unneeded memory deliberately. For a timeline or global variables, you can use the statement to free the memory that ActionScript objects use. For local variables—for delete example, a variable defined within a function definition—you can’t use the statement...
Page 79 For example, suppose your application attempts to load an XML file that’s 100 KB, but the device’s operating system has allocated only 30 KB to handle that incoming data stream. In this case, Flash Lite displays an error message to the user, indicating that not enough memory is available.
Page 80 Optimizing Content for Performance and Memory...
Page 81: Chapter 6: Testing Flash Lite Content (Flash Professional Only)
Testing Flash Lite Content (Flash Professional Only) Macromedia Flash Professional 8 includes a Flash Lite emulator that lets you test your application in the authoring tool as it will appear and function on an actual device. When you’re satisfied with the application running in the emulator, you can test it on an actual device.
Page 82 The Flash Lite emulator lets you preview your Flash Lite content as it will function and appear on an actual device. The emulator also contains controls that let you select a different test device and change the level of debugging information that the emulator generates. The emulator displays debugging messages in the Output panel to help you troubleshoot problems with your content.
Page 83 The Device Settings dialog box lets you select the test devices and Flash Lite content type that you are targeting. Each combination of test device and Flash Lite content type defines a device configuration that specifies what features are available to your application, such as supported audio formats, ability to make network connections, and other features.
Page 84: Testing Features Not Supported By The Flash Lite Emulator
Testing features not supported by the Flash Lite emulator The Flash Lite emulator does not support all the features available in the standard (desktop) test window. The following is a list of features available in the desktop Flash test window that are not available in the Flash Lite emulator: The List Variables (Debug >...
Page 85 Interacting with the emulator (Flash Professional only) You can use your computer mouse or use keyboard shortcuts to interact with the emulator’s keypad. You can interact with the following keys on the emulator’s keypad: Number keys (0 to 9), and the asterisk (*) and pound (#) keys ■...
Page 86 Changing test devices (Flash Professional only) The Test Device pop-up menu in the emulator settings pane lets you select a different test device in which to preview your content. The devices that you selected in the Device Settings dialog box determine the test devices that are listed in the Test Device pop-up menu (see “Selecting test devices and Flash Lite content type (Flash Professional only)”...
Page 87 If you haven’t yet selected any test devices before you begin testing your application, the Test Device pop-up menu says None Selected, and Flash displays a warning message where the emulator normally appears. To open the Device Settings dialog box and select your test devices without leaving the Flash Lite test window, click the message (in blue text) in the emulator pane, or select the Device Settings option in the Test Device pop-up menu.
Page 88 For more information about selecting your test devices, see “Selecting test devices and Flash Lite content type (Flash Professional only)” on page Setting emulator debug options (Flash Professional only) The Flash Lite emulator can send debugging messages to the Output panel while content is running.
Page 89 Zooming and rotating the Flash Lite emulator (Flash Professional only) You can rotate the Flash Lite emulator, as well as zoom in and out on its contents. Rotating the emulator is useful if the content in your application is meant to be viewed in an orientation that is different from the device’s normal orientation.
Page 90 For example, the following two images show the same content—a simple vector shape. The image on the left shows the content as viewed in the Flash Lite emulator at normal magnification level. The image on the right shows a portion of the same content zoomed to 400%.
Page 91 Available Stage size (in parentheses) Stage size of SWF file To avoid any undesirable scaling issues, Macromedia recommends that your Flash document’s Stage dimensions match the available Stage area for the selected test device and content type. Flash Lite features not supported by the emulator (Flash Professional only) The emulator doesn’t support all the ActionScript commands and player features that are...
Page 92: Flash Lite Error And Warning Messages (Flash Professional Only)
Unsupported ActionScript commands The Flash Lite emulator does not support the following fscommand() fscommand2() commands: FullScreen ■ ■ GetFreePlayerMemory ■ GetTotalPlayerMemory Launch ■ ■ Quit ■ StartVibrate GetNetworkConnectStatus ■ ■ GetNetworkRequestStatus ■ GetNetworkStatus Flash Lite error and warning messages (Flash Professional only) The Flash Lite emulator generates two types of error messages while you test your content.
Page 93 The other type of error message that can occur in the emulator also occurs on an actual device. These types of errors are displayed in an error dialog box that the user must close for the application to continue. The following image shows an example error dialog box as it appears in the emulator: On a device, the error dialog box that appears contains the string “Problem with content”...
Page 94: Selecting Test Devices And Flash Lite Content Type
Error Error string Description and possible causes number Bad image data The SWF file contains an image that either Flash Lite, or the platform’s native image decoder, was unable to decode. Bad sound data The SWF file attempted to load a sound in an unsupported format, or the sound data is corrupted.
Page 95 To select your test devices and Flash Lite content type: In Flash, open the Device Settings dialog box, by doing one of the following: Click the Device Settings button in the Property inspector (Window > Properties > ■ Properties). Select File > Device Settings. ■...
Page 96 If a device doesn’t support the selected content type, it appears dimmed. (On Macintosh systems, the icon next to the name of each device is dimmed, but not the text itself.) If none of the devices in a folder support the selected content type, the folder itself is dimmed.
Page 97: Flash Lite Content Types (Flash Professional Only)
The devices and content types listed in the Device Settings dialog box are loaded from a local XML database that is installed with Macromedia Flash Professional 8. As more devices that support Flash Lite become available, you can download and install an updated list of devices and content types from the Device Profile Updates page at www.macromedia.com/go/...
Page 98 Flash Lite supports the following content types: Flash Lite content Description Availability type Address Book Uses Flash Lite to let users DoCoMo and VodafoneKK associate a SWF file with an entry (Japan only) in their device’s address book application. Alarm Uses Flash Lite to let the user KDDI and VodafoneKK (Japan select a SWF file to play for the...
Page 99 Flash Lite content Description Availability type Image Viewer Use the Image Viewer application DoCoMo (Japan only) that lets the user manage and preview multimedia files on the device, including SWF files. Incoming Call Uses Flash Lite to display an DoCoMo, KDDI, and animation when the user receives VodafoneKK (Japan only) a call.
Page 100 Flash Lite content Description Availability type Sub LCD Uses Flash Lite to display content KDDI (Japan only) on the external or secondary screen available on some flip phones. UILauncher Uses Flash Lite for the device’s Uses Flash Lite to display the application launcher.
Page 101: Flash Lite Platform Capabilities (Flash Professional Only)
Flash Lite platform capabilities (Flash Professional only) Each combination of target device and Flash Lite content type defines a set of available Flash Lite features, such as navigation type, supported image and sound formats, or input text support. When the Information debug option is enabled in the emulator settings pane (see “Setting emulator debug options (Flash Professional only)”...
Page 102 The following table describes the Flash Lite platform capabilities as they are reported in the Output panel when you test your application in the emulator: Capability name Description and possible values CodePage Specifies the code page that the device uses. Values are in the ISO-639 language code format (for example, en for English and zh-TW for Traditional Chinese).
Page 103 Capability name Description and possible values FSCommand Indicates how frequently Flash Lite processes fscommand() function calls. Valid values are as follows: fscommand2() OnePerKey: Only one call is allowed for each fscommand() keypress. OnePerKeyPerFrame: Only one call is fscommand() allowed per event handler or per frame. All: No restriction on how frequently can be fscommand()
Page 104 Capability name Description and possible values LoadMovie Indicates how frequently Flash Lite processes loadMovie() function calls. Valid values are as follows: OnePerKey: Only one call is allowed for each loadMovie() keypress. OnePerKeyPerFrame: Only one call is loadMovie() allowed per event handler or per frame. All: No restriction on how frequently can be loadMovie()
Page 105 Capability name Description and possible values NavigationType Indicates the navigation mode that the platform supports: two-way, four-way, or four-way with wrap-around. For more information about navigation modes, see “Default navigation modes” on page 14. Valid values are as follows: 2Way: Up and down arrow keys supported only. 4Way: All four arrow keys (up, down, left, and right) are supported for navigation.
Page 106: About Playing A Device Video In The Emulator
About playing a device video in the emulator The Flash Lite player uses the device’s default video handler application to play video content in your SWF file, rather than decoding the video natively. This practice lets Flash Lite developers use any video format that the target device supports, such as 3GPP, MPEG, or AVI.
Page 107: Appendix A: Warning And Error Messages (Flash Professional Only)
APPENDIX A Warning and Error Messages (Flash Professional Only) This appendix lists the possible information and warning messages that the Macromedia Flash Lite emulator might generate while you’re testing your Flash Lite application. For more information about these warning messages, see “Setting emulator debug options (Flash...
Page 108 Error code Message Description FTPA004 loadMovie is ignored. The emulator detected a loadMovie() function call, which is not supported by the selected test device and content type. No modifications are made to the device-specific SWF file—this is just a warning. FTPA005 The call to GetURL for URL was Flash Lite allows only one...
Page 109 Error code Message Description FTPA015 The call to loadMovie for URL was Flash Lite allows only one loadMovie() ignored because there was more function call per keypress; the than one request per keypress. emulator detected that there was more than one so only the loadMovie() first command is processed—the...
Page 110 Error code Message Description FTPA020 The call to FSCommand with The currently selected test device and arguments command-arguments content type process only fscommand() was ignored because it was not function calls that result from users associated with a keypress. pressing a key on their device. The emulator detected that your application made a call to fscommand()
Page 111 Error code Message Description FTPS023 MP3 sounds not supported for the The emulator detected that the SWF selected content type on this file contains a native (nondevice) device. sound compressed with MP3 compression, which is not supported by the selected content type on this device.
Page 112 Error code Message Description FTPS031 More than one instance of URL Flash Lite allows only one getURL() Request calls found, only one function call per keypress or frame; allowed per keypress/frame. the emulator detected that there was more than one so only the getURL() first command is processed—the...
Page 113 Error code Message Description FTPS038 The call to StartVibrate was Flash Lite allows only one ignored because there was more call per fscommand2("StartVibrate") than one request per frame or keypress or frame; the emulator event. detected more than one, so only the first command is processed—the others are ignored.
Page 114 Error code Message Description FTPS068 SMAF (MA-3) sounds not The emulator detected a SMAF supported for the selected content (MA-3) device sound, which is not type on this device. supported by the selected content type on this device. FTPS069 SMAF (MA-5) sounds not The emulator detected a SMAF supported for the selected content (MA-5) device sound, which is not...
Page 115 Error code Message Description FTPS101 None of the formats in the sound Indicates that none of the device bundle are supported on this sounds in a sound bundle are device. supported by the selected content type on this device. FTPS102 SMAF sound playback failed.
Page 116 Warning and Error Messages (Flash Professional Only)
Page 117: Index
Index application modes, in Flash Lite 97 Flash Lite emulator changing test devices 86 debug options 88 features unsupported by 84 interacting with 85 button events 21 previewing applications with 84 rotating 89 warning and error messages 92, 107 zooming 89 classes, excluding built-in classes 79 font outlines, embedding in SWF files 41 content types in Flash Lite, described 97...
Page 118 menus, creating with buttons 23 native sound about 55 re-sampling at 8kHz 55 navigation. See tab navigation optimizing animation performance 72 bitmap graphics 73 bitmap versus vector graphics 73 excluding built-in classes 79 frames per second 75 performance 71 platform capabilities, determining 101 rendering quality, default quality 40 scrolling text 44 sound, about device and native 47...

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Flash 8

MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-DEVELOPING FLASH LITE 2.X Develop Manual

Chapter 1: Flash Lite 2.X Overview

Chapter 2: Creating Interactivity and Navigation

Chapter 3: Working with Text and Fonts

Chapter 4: Working with Sound, Video, and Images

Chapter 5: Optimizing Content for Performance and Memory

Chapter 6: Testing Flash Lite Content (Flash Professional Only)

Appendix A: Warning and Error Messages (Flash Professional Only)

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