Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Multimedia goes mobile with Flash  Lite 1.1

news
Jun 28, 20041 min

Macromedia's Flash  Lite 1.1 brings rich Internet apps, improved audio to mobile phones

Macromedia on Monday will introduce Flash Lite 1.1, an update to the Flash Player profile for mobile phones that is intended to expand capabilities for multimedia applications.

Designed for service providers and manufacturers, Version 1.1 supports the W3C standard SVG-T (Scalable Vector Graphics-Tiny) for rendering content on mobile phones. The update also backs network connectivity, has improved audio support, and features APIs to integrate Flash content with phone functionality, Macromedia said.

With Flash Lite, mobile phones can become more graphical, said Juha Christensen, president of mobile devices at Macromedia. The Flash Lite 1.1 development kit for developing Flash content for mobile phones using Flash MX Professional 2004 will be available this week.

Flash programming enjoys an advantage over SVG in developers’ eyes, one analyst said. “SVG has a fair bit of overhead,” said Seamus McAteer, senior analyst at Zelos Group. “It’s all XML-based, and SVG-Tiny wouldn’t incorporate a lot of the behaviors and features that you would get in Flash, for example, on a mobile environment.”

New network connectivity enables Flash content to make dynamic server queries and to bring rich Internet applications to mobile phones. Also added is support for MP3, WAV, and other audio formats.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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