Flash Lite ported to the iPhone

Thomas Joos has ported Flash Lite code to the iPhone, paving the way for interactive applications that make use of the Adobe technology, but not realizing the ability to playback embedded, full-strength Flash content.

Joos' impetus for porting Flash Lite was development of the "Rock Werchter Mobile Guide," a mobile phone-based music festival handbook. The guide requires a Flash Lite-enabled device, and since Joos wanted to reach the iPhone and iPod touch audience, he ported the environment to Mobile OS X.

The port uses a framework that sits on top of eyeGT, a graphic renderer capable of handling vector graphics and bitmaps. eyeGT allows definition of buttons, animations, hierarchical containers, color and special effects, and the like. It works on the iPhone/iPod touch as well as several other mobile devices. Joos created a framework called b.Tween that allows easy conversion of applications to ActionScript, a scripting language used for Flash development. The result is native, Flash Lite-compliant code that is passed through eyeGT for rendering.

As described by Joos:

"Native code can access any feature of the hosting platform: wants Bluetooth? Wants to process received SMS? Wants to read the phone book? All possible from native applications not so from a player based one."

You can see a video demonstration here if you're on an iPhone, or embedded below if you're using a Desktop browser:

Flash Lite is not a replacement for standard Flash in the sense of a full browsing experience. Thus far it's been used primarily as a means for implementing custom interfaces on mobile devices or delivering proprietary content built specifically to perform well within the bounds of a mobile device's performance/memory limitations.

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