Developing Flash Lite 2.x Applications Trademarks 1 Step RoboPDF, ActiveEdit, ActiveTest, Authorware, Blue Sky Software, Blue Sky, Breeze, Breezo, Captivate, Central, ColdFusion, Contribute, Database Explorer, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FlashCast, FlashHelp, Flash Lite, FlashPaper, Flash Video Endocer, Flex, Flex Builder, Fontographer, FreeHand, Generator, HomeSite, JRun, MacRecorder, Macromedia, MXML, RoboEngine, RoboHelp, RoboInfo, RoboPDF, Roundtrip, Roundtrip HTML, Shockwave, SoundEdit, Studio MX, UltraDev, and WebHelp are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated and may be registered in the United States or in other jurisdictions including internationally. Other product names, logos, designs, titles, words, or phrases mentioned within this publication may be trademarks, service marks, or trade names of Adobe Systems Incorporated or other entities and may be registered in certain jurisdictions including internationally. Third-Party Information This guide contains links to third-party websites that are not under the control of Adobe Systems Incorporated, and Adobe Systems Incorporated is not responsible for the content on any linked site. If you access a third-party website mentioned in this guide, then you do so at your own risk. Adobe Systems Incorporated provides these links only as a convenience, and the inclusion of the link does not imply that Adobe Systems Incorporated endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content on those thirdparty sites. SorensonTM SparkTM video compression and decompression technology licensed from Sorenson Media, Inc. Fraunhofer-IIS/Thomson Multimedia: MPEG Layer-3 audio compression technology licensed by Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Multimedia (http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/) Independent JPEG Group: This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. 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. Visual SourceSafe is a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Copyright © 2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. This manual may not be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form in whole or in part without written approval from Adobe Systems Incorporated. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the owner or authorized user of a valid copy of the software with which this manual was provided may print out one copy of this manual from an electronic version of this manual for the sole purpose of such owner or authorized user learning to use such software, provided that no part of this manual may be printed out, reproduced, distributed, resold, or transmitted for any other purposes, including, without limitation, commercial purposes, such as selling copies of this documentation or providing paid-for support services. Acknowledgments Project Management: Mary Leigh Burke Writing: Tim Statler Managing Editor: Rosana Francescato Editing: Linda Adler, Geta Carson, Mary Ferguson, Mary Kraemer Production Management: Adam Barnett, Kristin Conradi Localization: Luciano Arruda and Masayo Noda Media Design and Production: Yuriko Ando, Aaron Begley, Paul Benkman. John Francis, Geeta Karmarkar, Paul Rangel, Arena Reed, Mario Reynoso Special thanks to Lisa Friendly, Bonnie Loo, Erick Vera, the beta testers, and the entire Flash Lite engineering and QA teams. First Edition: January 2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated 601 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Contents Chapter 1: Flash Lite 2.x Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About Flash Lite 2.0 features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Flash Lite 2.0 new features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 About components in Flash Lite 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chapter 2: Creating Interactivity and Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 About user interaction in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Keys supported by Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Using default navigation in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Handling key and button events (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . 20 Chapter 3: Working with Text and Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 About text in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creating and formatting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using input text fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Font rendering methods in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Text field example application (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . . Creating scrolling text (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 34 35 38 42 44 Chapter 4: Working with Sound, Video, and Images . . . . . . . . . .47 About sound in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Using device sound (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Using native Flash sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Using device video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Loading external images. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Chapter 5: Optimizing Content for Performance and Memory . . 71 Performance optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Device speed and frames per second . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Optimizing ActionScript performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 3 Chapter 6: Testing Flash Lite Content (Flash Professional Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Overview of Flash Lite testing features (Flash Professional only) . . . 81 Testing features not supported by the Flash Lite emulator . . . . . . . . . 84 Using the Flash Lite emulator (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Flash Lite error and warning messages (Flash Professional only) . . . 92 Selecting test devices and Flash Lite content type (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Flash Lite content types (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Flash Lite platform capabilities (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . .101 About playing a device video in the emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Appendix A: Warning and Error Messages (Flash Professional Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Flash Lite emulator error and information messages (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 4 Contents 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. For example, in Flash Lite 2.0 you can load device-specific media types (images, sounds, video) that aren't natively supported by Flash Lite. Flash Lite 2.0 also features device integration features, such as the ability to make phone calls and send text messages, among others. This chapter provides an overview of the new features in Flash Lite 2.0, and also discusses those features in Flash Player 7 that Flash Lite 2.0 doesn't support. This chapter contains the following topics: About Flash Lite 2.0 features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Flash Lite 2.0 new features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 About components in Flash Lite 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1 About Flash Lite 2.0 features This section lists new features in Flash Lite 2.0, as well as those features available in Flash Player 7 that are not supported by Flash Lite 2.0. Flash Lite 2.0 includes the following new features, which are described more fully under "Flash Lite 2.0 new features" on page 6. ActionScript 2.0 Device video playback Local, persistent data storage (Flash Lite shared objects) Support for loading device-specific sound and image formats New system capabilities information Support for additional device keys, including QWERTY keyboard support and support for up to 11 soft keys Rich text formatting (partial support) 5 Ability to control backlight duration and set custom focus rectangle color Support for ActionScript 2.0, which lets you use advanced programming techniques including classes, interfaces, and strict data typing Synchronized device sound XML processing support Several ActionScript classes available in Flash Player 7 are unsupported or partially supported in 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) Native support for Flash Video (FLV) playback Support for Flash Application Protocol (the binary data communication protocol used by Flash Remoting) Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) formatting with text fields Masking with device fonts Bitmap smoothing while rendering at high-quality The following features in Flash Player 7 are not available in Flash Lite 2.0: Flash Lite 2.0 new features The previous versions of Flash Lite (Flash Lite 1.0 and Flash Lite 1.1) are based on Flash Player 4. Flash Lite 2.0 is based on Flash Player 7 and supports most of the features available in that version of Flash Player--including XML processing and ActionScript 2.0. Flash Lite 2.0 also provides several features not available in Flash Player 7 that are designed for mobile applications. The rest of this section describes the new features in Flash Lite 2.0. Flash Lite 2.0 ActionScript Flash Lite 2.0 ActionScript is the scripting language used in Flash Lite 2.0 applications. It shares some, but not all, of the ActionScript used in Flash Player 7. Flash Lite 2.0 also includes several ActionScript additions and extensions that let you, for example, get information about the device, make phone calls, or control the backlight duration. 6 Flash Lite 2.x Overview You can use ActionScript 2.0 or ActionScript 1.0 syntax when you develop applications for Flash Lite 2.0. ActionScript 2.0 provides authoring support for classes, interfaces, and strict data typing. Using ActionScript 2.0 syntax lets the ActionScript compiler provide better debugging information, and also encourages better program design. For more information about learning Flash Lite 2.0 ActionScript, see the following books and topics: Introduction to Flash Lite 2.x ActionScript Flash Lite 2.x ActionScript Language Reference Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Using Flash Device video playback Flash Lite 2.0 can play video in any format that's supported natively by the target device. For example, some devices record and playback video in the 3GP video format. Others support AVI or MPEG video. During playback, Flash Lite passes the original video data to the device to decode and render the data directly to the screen. You can incorporate video in your application in any of the following ways: Bundle the original video data in the SWF file. Load an external video file from the device's memory card, or over the network. To control video playback in Flash Lite 2.0 you use the ActionScript Video object. First available in Flash Player 6, the Video object in Flash Lite 2.0 has additional methods for controlling video, as the Video.play() and Video.pause() methods. You can also use the System.capabilities.videoMIMETypes array to determine what video formats a device supports. For more information about the Video object and using video in Flash Lite, see "Using device video" on page 58. ...