The global software maker Adobe Systems has long held a vice-like grip over the fancy end of Web site presentation, thanks to the ubiquity of its Flash animation tools. But a new computing segment is opening up that is forcing Adobe to rapidly change tack.

Some of the points which i like :

“If you look at the traditional developer community, the creative professionals that have used Adobe products for years and years, there is a real interest,” Murarka says. “They are trying to figure out what they should do in mobile. Flash is proving to be three to five times faster for the application and content development than most of the technologies they have used in the past. But I don’t think Flash is a direct competitor for Java, because they solve different needs — Java is meant for a programmer, and Flash is meant for a creative professional.”

“Simpler is better,” Rankine says. “You are almost taking a backwards step in designing for a device that is an nth of the power of what you are used to calling upon when developing web applications. Although in a lot of ways the restriction of the device brings out more creativity in the developer in terms of how they are going to achieve things.

“Certainly usability plays a much larger role in developing applications for the handheld device. Web users have become a lot savvier about applications and how to interact through a browser, whereas with a mobile phone you are dealing with a very basic device that uses a lot of muscle memory with your fingers. So developing applications that are intuitive and easy to use from the very first go is critical to the success or failure of your application. You need to treat the user as a dummy almost in proposing what they need to do to interact with your application.”

“You just can’t get away from the fact that the mobile platform is a fragmented one,” Rankine says. “But Flash reduces the load on porting as a part of the process, because rather than having to port a specific run-time for every handset, we can cover off a vast majority with one installer file. And even being clever about how you code with Flash means you can develop content that plays on a variety of screen dimensions without having to recode the entire application from scratch.

“It would be ideal to have the ‘create once, play anywhere’ ubiquity that you have on the web, but it’s a completely different playing field with the hardware that is involved in the industry.”

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vivek