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Mobile app development is a minefield, there’s so many different platforms, and different things to consider. I decided now was a good time to run through the market today, as of July 2010 and try to identify what you as a developer should be learning, or what business owners should be looking at. The quick answer by the way – it depends.

What’s out there?

Mobile platforms, languages and SDK’s

There are many mobile brands multiple possible platforms and SDK’s depending on the devices, so I couldn’t possible list everything here. Instead I wanted to provide a brief summary of what’s involved with each platform, devices it run’s on and places to start looking.

iOs

• Runs on iPhone, iPad
• Start at the iPhone Dev Centre
• Requires you run Mac OS X, $99 for the SDK, you must use the XCode IDE
• Write native apps using native Objective-C, or using HTML + JavaScript and a porting tool such as PhoneGap or Titanium
• Sell apps only through the iTunes App Store

Android

• Runs on a range of Android enabled devices including handsets from HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola as well as a growing range of Tablets
• Start at Android.com
• Open source and can be built on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, you can choose your IDE, plugins provided for Eclipse
• Write native apps in Java, or using HTML + JavaScript and a porting tool such as PhoneGap, Sony Ericsson Web SDK or Titanium
• Sell apps in the official Android Market, or unofficial stores such as Handango, GetJar, Handmark and SlideME

BlackBerry

• Runs on all BlackBerry devices
• Start at the BlackBerry developer zone
• Write native apps in Java 5, or write Blackberry Widgets for newer devices using HTML + JavaScript
• Use Windows, Mac OS X, Linux with an IDE of your choice including plugins for Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse. You can also use PhoneGap to publish Web Widgets.
• Sell apps in the official store BlackBerry App World or unofficial stores such as Handango, GetJar and Handmark

Symbian

• Runs on most Nokia devices and a range of others from manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Sharp (full list here)
• Start at the Symbian Developer Site
• Although apps can be written in a range of languages, (a guide can be found here) the best approach is to choose between Symbian C++ (which supports the widest range of devices), WRT Widgets (which are written in HTML/CSS/JS but don’t have much device access) or Qt (a cross platfrom C++ style language whose apps run on S60 3rd edition + Symbian devices as well as Windows Mobile, Maemo/Meego). You can also use PhoneGap to publish WRT Widgets alongside output for other platforms.
• The Nokia Qt SDK runs on Windows and Linux, with a beta for Mac OS X and can also be used for developing Symbian C++ apps. Alternatively both types of app can be developed using the Windows only Carbide.c++ or using custom tools. WRT Widgets can be written using the tools of your choice, or using Symbian WRT Toolkit which also now includes PhoneGap and runs on Windows, OS X and Linux.
• Sell Apps in the Nokia run Ovi Store or unofficial stores such as Handango, GetJar and Handmark

MeeGo/Maemo

• Maemo 5 runs on the Nokia N900 and Nokia Tablets, since Feb 2010 it has merged with Moblin to become MeeGo. MeeGo runs on a range on netbooks and will be installed on certain future high-end Nokia devices.
• Start at the Maemo page on Forum Nokia, from October 2010 the MeeGo project for devices should replace this location.
• Apps for Maemo are written using the Maemo 5 SDK with allows development in Qt (a cross platfrom C++ style language whose apps also run on Windows Mobile, MeeGo and S60 3rd edition+ Symbian devices). Apps for MeeGo will use the same language albeit with a slightly different (hopefully backwards compatible) SDK.
• Sell Apps in the Nokia run Ovi Store or unofficial stores such as Handango, GetJar and Handmark

Windows Phone 7

• Windows Phone development is now gearing up for the future and Windows Phone 7, a gorgeous interface for devices being launched in Q3 2010.
• Start at the Windows Phone developer portal and the Getting Started page on MSDN
• Apps for Windows Phone 7 are written using Silverlight for most apps or the XNA Framework for graphics based games.
• The free toolset Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta is required and runs on Windows Vista/Windows 7
• Sell Apps in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Others

• Java ME is installed on more devices than any other platform, but far from being ‘write once run anywhere’ can require different builds for each device. Write in Java, and publish on any of a huge range of application stores.
• AIR/Flash Lite is installed on a range of devices and platforms including Symbian and Android. It has limited access to device API’s and is best used for simple apps. There are multiple versions of Flash Lite with different capabilities, and all run in the rudimentary ActionScript 2 language. AIR can run on Android 2.2+ and runs ActionScript 3. All Flash Lite developers need a licensed copy of Adobe Flash, AIR developers can use the free SDK. Apps can be distributed in a range of app stores.
• Windows Mobile 6/6.5 has been replaced by Windows Phone 7. Despite there being plenty of devices out there still running the software, and no devices currently running Windows Phone 7, Microsoft seems to be discouraging developers from developing apps for Windows Mobile with all developer portals redirected to Windows Phone 7 info and tutorials. Windows Mobile apps were written in .net and require XP or Vista along with Visual Studio 2008.
• BREW is installed on devices by operators, with the majority being in the US and Japan and almost none in Europe. It has a huge install base though, 1400+ devices and 250 million handsets. Apps can be written using C, C++ and on some devices Flash Lite and Java. BREW apps are said to be costly and take a long time to produce due to expensive and slow certification processes. Apps can be purchased on the device using operators stores.
• BREWMP is a new OS aimed at low end devices and installed on HTC SMART, Samsung Reality and AT+T’s Quick Messaging Devices. Apps are written using Flash Lite, Trig, Lua or C. Application stores will be launched to sell apps, with the first launching in China.
• Samsung Bada is Samsungs new OS for Smartphones, and currently features on Samsung Wave and Omnia devices. Native apps are written in C++ with the option of using Web Technologies and Flash. Apps can be purchased through the Samsung Apps store which currently has almost 1500 free and paid apps.
• Palm and HP are still encouraging developers to create apps for webOS, the innovative but sadly ignored OS running on the Palm Pre. There’s plenty of support including a web only IDE and all apps are written using HTML/CSS/JS. Get started at the Palm Developer Center. Apps are purchased on the device.

What do other developers say?

These major reports have been released over the past 3 months, each the result of research conducted on various developers working in the mobile sector. Both are worth reading in full if you have a spare hour.

• The Appcelerator Mobile Developer Survey June 2010 is a survey of 2,733 Appcelerator developers who were asked which platforms they liked working with and which they would look to work with in the future. To be taken with a pinch of salt perhaps, given that Appcelerator developers are using a platform which makes it easy to publish to multiple platforms, perhaps giving them a bias and lack of experience in working with individual platforms.
• The Vision Mobile Mobile Developer Economics 2010 Report is a far more in depth study than Appcelerators, with developers chosen using a wider range of criteria, and asked a wider range of questions. Only 400 developers were questioned for this report however.

Preferred platforms – Android and iOs come out top

Apple’s platform came out high in almost all areas of the Appcelerator survey. Developers feel Apple’s platform has the best near-term outlook (78% for Apple vs 16% for Android with Blackberry and other platforms not getting a look in), and although 54% said they felt Android had the best long-term outlook, 40% still plumped for Apple.

Appcelerator asked developers what they would be interested in developing for, iPhone and iPad came out top, with Androids mobile and tablet offerings close behind. Blackberry and Windows 7 raised less interest, with very few developers interested in developing  for Symbian, Palm Pre or Meego.

Vision mobile asked what developers actually develop using and found Android came out on top (60%) with iPhone in second place closely followed by Java ME and Symbian. The most important reason for choosing a platform was market penetration and monetisation.

Market Penetration – Java ME and Symbian have the largest user base

Vision Mobile found that whilst developers prefer Android and iOS the number of people with Java ME and Symbian devices is far larger. Flash Lite, Java ME and Symbian all have a small number of apps available for large numbers of devices, in Q2 2010 Symbian had just 6000 apps for sale with a market share of 390 million units. iOS and to a lesser extent Android have much large numbers of apps for a smaller market share, in that same quarter Apple had 180,000 apps for 60 million units. Windows Phone and Blackberry have both low numbers of apps for low numbers of users.

One area of the market being under-served was localised apps, Vision Mobile found localised Spanish and French Apps counted for less than 3000 total apps in the crowded Android store.

Monetisation – App stores lead the way

Less than 5% of developers Vision Mobile interviewed used the once ubiquitous operator portals or preinstallation through operator to distribute their apps, the majority use app stores, with Apple’s and Androids the most popular. App stores offer a faster route to market, and faster time to payment.

The leading app stores are reputedly hard to make money from. Both are very crowded. Android has only 13 of its 46 countries able to accept payments for apps, users can ‘return’ apps within 24 hours without reason if they don’t like them. A standalone developer in Apple’s App Store can hope to sell an average 1000 – 2000 apps at $1.99. (Vision Mobile).

Ease of development – Android beats all others

Vision Mobile assessed Android, Symbian, Java ME and iOs platforms for ease of development. Based on their test data they concluded Android took the least time to develop and debug apps with, followed by Symbian, Java ME and with iPhone coming in last. I personally wasn’t totally convinced by their testing methodology, so I would suggest you read this section of the report and study the data to draw your own conclusions (Appendix 2). They also only focused on 4 platforms – 2 of which (Symbian and Java ME) are clearly on the wane.

My conclusions

Android,  iOs and Web are the best skills to sell to others

As a freelancer or employee looking to sell your skills to others, Android, iOs and Web are safe bets to keep you in pocket.

Android and iOs are popular platforms and I predict there will continue to be a demand for developers of these platforms. As the field gets inevitably more crowded you can differentiate yourself by being reliable and producing good quality code (not as common as you might think). Releasing your own apps to impress potential clients (but not to make money themselves – see below) would be a good idea at this point.

Gaining experience in a range of Widget platforms will allow you to transfer web skills between platforms and enable you to offer a range of platforms to an employer. With web you can target Symbian, Blackberry, iOs, Android and even Palm. Familiarise yourself with each platforms own widget set up and install process as well as the PhoneGap tool.

To make a quick buck or gain fame as a single developer focus on untapped markets

I feel strongly that lone developers wanting to make money or gain fame from a mobile app should team up with a great designer, but it has happened in the past. The key is to avoid over populated areas where it will be very hard for even the best teams to stand out, unless they have an existing brand.

My feeling is the iOs and Android stores are far too crowded already, but if you must enter the iOs or Android stores, think about targeting a niche. As mentioned before, localised apps is an untapped area for many…

A great way of making money from mobile apps looks to be to target the long tail of platforms. Samsung Bada is out but with few apps yet released, Windows Phone 7 is unreleased giving plenty of time to be one of the first apps to launch in that field, and for slightly busier stores but perhaps safer long-term skill investments get into Symbian Qt and BlackBerry.

To launch an rich app for an existing brand test the water with web, then go multi-platform

If you have an existing brand and want to launch an app which doesn’t require lots of device API’s I would launch on web platforms first. This will be cheaper in terms of development as the skills are often easier to find, and you can write once and publish on multiple platforms easily thanks to tools like PhoneGap.

Once you reach the limitations of web, assuming there is a demand for your product, you should release in iOS and Android stores to get the app lovers interested, and then consider Qt for Symbian (ensuring the widest range of future devices) to target the Nokia masses and BlackBerry for the young elite and business customers. Consider Windows 7, although be aware of the risk it might not be a success.

To tackle emerging markets or for simple apps for non smart phones consider Java ME, BREW and Flash Lite

Most people don’t have a phone that can run the platforms we’ve discussed, with the exception of Symbian. Most people have a phone that can run Java ME. If you want to tackle the non smartphone market, you will need to start dabbling with Java ME. For the US markets consider BREW also, and try BREWMP for newer low end devices. The nicest interfaces can be produced using Flash Lite, but this prevents you from accessing the device API’s in the same way, limited memory can cause problems for you, and less phones run Flash Lite than run Java. Expect to spend lots of time and money tailoring your build to each device, and consider that many people without smartphone’s don’t even realise they can install apps.

Open to comments, and coming next

With my work at ribot I get to play with a wide range of platforms, and I’ll be experimenting with more of those listed over the coming weeks. Expect more info on the various languages and my thoughts on differences between them. Please let me know your opinions below on these ideas.

Here’s a quick review of the book “AdvancED Flash on Devices” by Elad Elrom, Scott Janousek and Thomas Joos, published at Friends of ED. In a nutshell, if you work with Flash and mobile, you must buy it.

For the past few months I’ve been working on a Flash Lite project, and 3 months ago I acquired a copy of AdvancED Flash On Devices. Before this book my main point of reference for any questions on the Flash Lite ecosystem was random mutterings here and there on various Flash blogs, or the constantly changing and always over cluttered Adobe pages. To be frank though, very few people seem to talk about Flash Lite at all, including Adobe.

Topics on Flash Lite in the book include details on devices which run Flash Lite, different versions of Flash Lite and their differences, quirks and bugs, framworks others have made, third party tools and more. The only thing it won’t tell you is how to code Flash Lite apps in any detail, but there are already plenty of books on Flash and Actionscript 2, and the classes available on Flash Lite are well covered in Adobe’s technical documentation.

Importantly there are also chapters on the future for Flash on Mobile, including getting Flash apps onto the iPhone and Flash 10 for mobile.

Since development of Flash Lite has stopped, you can also be sure that this book contains a summary of Flash Lite as it ended, and therefore will not go out of date (although you will have to know to ignore any 3.1 information). If you find yourself working on a Flash Lite project a year from now targeting devices which aren’t compatible with the new Flash 10 for mobile, this book should still serve you as well as it does today.

An essential purchase for anyone looking for a comprehensive overview of the complex world of Flash on mobile.

Yesterday I attended the Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference at the BFI Southbank. This was a conference with a focus on business and strategy within the mobile industry. Here are my thoughts on the day.

Teenage panel

The undisputed highlight of the day was the teenage dragons den panel organised by Julia Shalet of the Digital Youth Project. During this segment, various startups pitched their idea to a group of six teenagers aged 16 – 18 who gave them feedback and asked questions.

What was most interesting about this segment to me was not so much the fact that these were younger people, but that the stage was given to non-industry people. Listening to ‘normal’ people give their views on apps, how they use their phones and what they want from their services was a real eye-opener and its something the industry should be doing a lot more of. As one panel member stated, app’s and iphones are what ‘you lot’ (us, the audience) are interested in, not your average teenager (or I’d imagine your average person in general).

Points that surprised/interested me:

• All of the teenagers on stage used their phones for texting, and in the case of the 2 Blackberry owners, online messaging, and very little else
• Most of the teenagers were happy to have ’simple phones’, ‘just a Nokia’ etc. One guy who did get a Blackberry said he preferred his N95 and wished he had just stuck with that
• The teenagers were all keen on at least one of the mobile application ideas pitched to them – despite not having a phone that would be able to easily run those apps, nor really showing any strong keeness to upgrade

It would have been nice to hear some more general views on mobile from the panel, but there is plenty of research available at the mobileYouth site as introduced before the panel by Graham Brown.

As developers and startups, we shouldn’t assume we know what people want, and just develop for ourselves (i.e. fun iPhone and android apps, and business-like Blackberry apps). We could be missing out on a big alternative market.

Other interesting topics

Belinda Parmar from Ladygeek made some interesting points about marketing to women. Not over simplifying, not offering too much choice and not simply going for pink versions were among the points mentioned. Like the teenagers, this talk showed that there are plenty of markets we might not even realise we are missing, and each should be carefully considered.

Douglas Richards and a group of VC’s spoke in the morning about getting funding. The key point seemed to be that app’s don’t make money, services do. Money is also to be made in providing the backbone that these app’s and services run on.

Some constructive criticism

Firstly well done to the team for putting on the first conference of its kind, the day went smoothly and seemed to go without a hitch, even managing to stay on schedule, and providing a lunch and some decent food throughout the day.

As with any conference, it wasn’t all perfection however. Sadly one panel was full of people promoting their companies individual offerings, and failing to discuss the topic at hand. Another descended into a discussion about social networks when the topic promised was on context and the user experience. There was also a distinct lack of true ‘heroes of the mobile screen’, although whether that is a bad thing is up for debate – we don’t need an Oscars of mobile just yet!

My advice for improvements for next time would be:

• Less pure business – a focus also on mobile design and user experience would produce more of a balance
• Select energetic interesting speakers over those from a corporate background who are restricted in what they can say
• Ensure those moderating the panels are able to do so properly – keeping the panellists focussed on the topic set
• More full presentations – panels are often a bad idea, people can get dragged down rabbit holes and end up off topic. A solid presentation, by a published field expert, for at least 25 mins wins every time in my book. Think TED and dConstruct not SXSW.

Let’s see what the team comes up with next year!

I’ve just got back from a 2 week trip to North America, taking in Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. This is the first time I’ve really let loose with mobile apps on a trip, abandoning worries about data charges and using a range of iPhone apps. There is no doubt the trip was all the better for having these apps, and I thought I’d discuss how exactly they aided me and highlight the most useful ones.

I’ll go through each aspect of the trip mobile apps helped me with in turn, and then highlight specific apps, some apps span a few of these. I’m using an iPhone, 1st Gen (so no GPS nor compass).

Local transport

By far the best feature I was able to access on mobile was to figure out the local transport systems in the various cities.

How I used to navigate local transport

I used to find local transport a nightmare – I had no idea where any buses were going apart from the final destination, wouldn’t know which one to catch, which side of the road, where to get off – it was basically impossible. I’d either find one bus and use that, walking the rest of the way, or pay the extra for taxis, or even walk everywhere taking massive amounts of time and exhausting myself.

Apps I used on this trip

I downloaded a local bus app for each city – Seattle Metro for Seattle and PDX Bus for Portland. However, both these had awkward interfaces and simply didn’t make navigating the buses any easier.

Seattle Metro screenshot

Google Maps (installed by default on the iPhone) on the hand was a revelation, simple to understand and use, and it wasn’t even a dedicated bus app – it simply integrated perfectly with the other features of finding out where you were and where to go.

How Google Maps public transport feature works

You simply type in where you are, where you want to go and request a route by public transport. If you don’t know where you are you can use GPS or in our case triangulation, which is can pretty much locate you to within a small range in a large city.

Google Maps screenshot

You then select the time you want to leave, and the app will walk you through the steps needed to reach the destination – how to get to the bus stop, what bus to catch, where to get off and how to reach your intended destination.

Benefits – saving time and money

This app enables you to take advantage of the same cheap transport benefits locals have (and in some cases gives you an advantage over locals). Before I would never have attempted to navigate the bus systems in a strange city, and if I did, I am sure I would have wasted a lot of time getting on the wrong bus or failing to take the fastest routes. You also save the money you may have had to spend on taxis.

There were places we simply could not have gone without this app, such as Kurt Cobains old house in the Lake Washington area of Seattle – there’s just one bus, every half hour, from a random location 10mins walk from our hotel. With Google Maps we got there within 30 mins of deciding to go, had a look, went for a quick walk somewhere else, used triangulation to roughly figure out where we were and got the next bus downtown.

Problems encountered

The app isn’t perfect, we did find some issues.

On Labor day (bank holiday Monday in the UK) the buses run on the Sunday schedules, but Google Maps didn’t know this, hence all the bus times were incorrect all day long. Once we figured out the problem we just used the app to locate bus stops and then read the times on the bus stop. In one case there were no times, so I used another app Seattle Metro, to grab the latest times from the bus company.

Although it lists the nearest bus, if you miss it, it assumes you will want to wait for the next bus rather than walk somewhere else. There is no way of searching out alternative bus stops. At one point we found ourselves in a rough part of town having to wait 20 mins for the next bus. I didn’t want to run alternative searches on my phone. In the end we just walked down the road, and I kept checking for alternative buses as we moved along using the triangulation. Essentially we had to physically move to manipulate the data – a cumbersome input device for sure!

Finding things to do and see

There a number of apps dedicated to travel – locating bars and restaurants and finding stuff to do in the day. Some of these aren’t powered by the most trustworthy sources, so I tend to stick to guide books like Time Out, Lonely Planet and Rough Guides and do a quick sweep of websites before leaving.

This year I was able to put the Lonely Planet guides on my phone by downloading PDF’s of sections I was interested in from their website and putting them on the iPhone using the air sharing app. Unfortunately it was almost unusable as the pdf’s take ages to scroll, always go back to the first page when you exit the app off and aren’t that easy to read on the small device.

Much better was Lonely Planets Travel Guides app which lets you download city guides for around £10 each. Overpriced certainly, and not the most usable, but still hands down the best option. Lighter and less touristy than getting out a book each time, and much better than the PDF’s. The main issue with the app was that the only way to view bars and restaurant was either using a near me feature which listed ones close to you at a given moment in time, or by accessing the map and clicking on random dots to see what was there. Another major flaw is resetting the app every time you load it. Not perfect by any means, but a good effort – I look forward to improved versions of this in future.

Lonely Planet guides screenshot

Other features

I printed all my essential docs as pdfs and put them on the air sharing app. This meant I could quickly check numbers and times without carrying round lots of paper or checking my mail each time.

Being able to access Facebook in the park led me to arrange a meeting with an old friend who was only available that night, there is no doubt we would have otherwise missed each other as I had no time that day to go to an internet cafe (in fact, I didn’t even see any internet cafes).

Web access at anytime allowed me to check opening times for places, ensuring I didn’t go to the trouble of heading all the way to a gallery in Fremont which was closed.

Google Maps helped me to locate hard to find bars and cafe’s, the Seattle and Portland Cocktail Compass even told me which bars near me had happy hour on, and how long they had left!

Final thought

Apps like these don’t just add convenience to a holiday, or satisfy the urge to check your email every 5 mins (not something I actually did), they can actually change your entire trip. We saw and did far more on this trip than any other, traveling faster and cheaper than before on public transport, feeling less tired from walking around everywhere and knowing where and when to visit places. One could say this takes some of the fun out of traveling – the getting lost and finding your way. Personally, I feel getting lost is not something I (and especially not my girlfriend) actually finds as fun as it seems when it happens. It generally leads to wandering around desolate rough parts of towns, worried and stressed.

Whatever your view, there can be no doubt travel is being changed by mobile devices, and we are only at the beginning. Augmented reality here we come!

Image courtesy of FallenPegasus – http://www.flickr.com/photos/fallenpegasus/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

I’ve just finished listening to an interesting episode of the Deep Fried Bytes podcast entitled in part “Why comments are evil”. In this episode the guest, Corey Haines (a traveling programmer living an interesting life which warrants discussion in itself), explains why he believes comments shouldn’t be the recommended practice they are often considered, and can be easily abused. Here’s a quick summary of his reasoning:

Comments are often used to explain poorly written code

• If you need to explain your code by adding comments inside methods, the method is doing too many things and needs to be broken into smaller methods
• The name of the method should accurately convey what the method is doing to a reader, no comments should be required

Comments rot

• When code is updated, comments don’t always get updated alongside it
• The comments end up lying about what the code is doing

In summary:

• Write better code
• Use highly descriptive method names and parameter names
• Where you feel a comment is needed, instead take the time to rewrite and refactor the code to be more readable

My thoughts

The timing of this couldn’t have been better for me. I’d spent the day working on the code for the memory efficient data list I discussed last week. I had just created 3 functions which each did around 8 different task, broken up by comments explaining what each did. Each task was only 3 – 6 lines of code, so it wasn’t an obscenely long method, but I still wasn’t sure whether to refactor or move on. After listening to the podcast I took their advice of never leaving this until later and refactored the next day.

The result:

• once the code had been refactored into different methods, I was able to see clearly where methods could be combined, reducing the amount of code
• now I had more readable code, I realised some of these new methods really belonged in another class
• so the code was shorter, easier to read, and the comments were gone
• finally, I spotted a bug as it was now really exposed and obvious

Now I plan to impose a new coding ‘rule’ – no comments within methods.

What about comments above public methods, and at the head of classes? The podcast touched on these, saying you might want them for a framework, or for API documentation, although you shouldn’t use them in an auto doc style whereby you just replicate parameter names in comments. I have mixed thoughts on this. I agree that it seems pointless to describe well named methods and well named parameters twice, although it can be useful to detail restrictions on parameters for API documentation. I’d then like to use an automatic tool to produce this documentation to be kept from the code. Also descriptions at the head of certain classes can help explain where, when and how to use the class.

I guess my final thought is to use discretion.

Any thoughts?

I’ve been working on some a visual component for a flash mobile app, and thought I’d use it to give you a quick case study on how important it is to optimise everything for mobile. Although this example came from an app for Flash Mobile and Flash Lite, the same problem is suffered by iPhone devs, and anyone developing mobile content.

The component – a list of data

I’m trying create a list of data which can be navigated by pressing up and down on a nav pad. Each time you navigate, the next item in the list comes into view. You can only see one item at a time.

The intensive option – a basic list

The first time I did this, I created a long list of data, and showed the first item. Pressing up and down simply moved the list up and down as this diagram demonstrates:

There are a couple of issues with this:

• Its uses up a lot of memory as all the list items have to be attached to the stage from the beginning
• You can’t have lists looping round, you can only go to each end

The improved option – reusing movieclips

As the following diagram will hopefully explain, there is another way. You can have just 3 movieclips, and change the position and content of each as required. This saves memory as you only have 3 movieclips on the stage per component and you can loop round and round.

Each coloured square represents one movieclip.

As you can see, this is relatively simple to implement and results in a much more efficient and flexible component. Any thoughts, let me know.

This article takes a look at Flash Lite Components – reusable controls and elements which you can drop into Flash Lite apps. I look at existing techniques, libraries and components as well as some tips on creating your own. My personal reason for this investigation is that at ribot we are working on some visual components for a little app we are creating, and I’d like to find some pointers on how we might be able to craft these in a reusable way. Hopefully you will learn something from this, and comment away at the end to feed back into the conversation.

What existing Flash Lite components are available?

Forum Nokia

The latest high profile component release (actually around a year ago now) I could find was the Forum Nokia Flash Lite Components which include a button, popup dialog and scrollbar. Some of the components are skinable, they are flexible in terms of size. They appear easy to install and well documented. Adobe reported on these, mentioning they were rather high in memory consumption – this is down to their flexibility and ease of use – there’s a price to pay for everything on mobile!

Forum Nokia then launched a competition this year which resulted in some winning Flash Lite Components being developed. From that article you can download and play with a few other components. These all appear to follow the same structure as the components created by Nokia.

Adobe examples

The Flash Mobile blog has some Flash Lite UI Component Examples which are intended for internal use only and aren’t documented. Apparently they are very lightweight, so could be a good example of how to develop components, and were developed by the Adobe team. Closer inspection reveals they aren’t especially flexible nor reusable. They are too lightweight! Yes they use less memory, but they haven’t taken into account the need for different sizes and purposes that the Nokia components have. The page that contains the examples has some other great Flash Lite resources and is well worth further investigation.

Shuriken Framwork

Shuriken Components is a framework for creating Flash Lite 2.x+ components, and is the work of one solo developer Jesse Warden. These components are far more developer centric, resulting in a very light SWF file, with as many elements as possible drawn dynamically. This framework requires lots of developer input, and is closest in style to the framework we have been working on recently. My concern about this framework is it ties the presentation to the logic code too closely. As a resource its great if you want to go down the path of creating assets dynamically though, with plenty of code to play with and learn from. Sadly, there’s a lack of documentation (unless I missed it, feel free to chip in Jesse if you find this article).

Conclusion

So in summary, it looks like plenty of people have thought about making Flash Lite component libraries, but really only got to the stage where they were able to teach others how to make those libraries using their ideas. Not many people seem to have taken them up on this, but since we are looking to develop our own components anyway, this seems plenty to go on.

Installing components

Installing components using MXP files

The easiest components to install were those which used MXP files to manage the installation. These then run the Adobe Extension Manager which installs the following:

• Install .fla files containing the assets for the component into your default Flash components folder e.g “[INSTALL PATH]\Flash
  CS4\en\Configuration\Components\Forum Nokia”
• Install class .as files containing the logic of the component into your default Flash classpath, e.g. “[INSTALL PATH]\Flash
  CS4\en\Configuration\Classes\com\forumnokia”

To add components now, all you need to do is drag them from the components window inside Flash CS3/CS4 into your .fla for your app.

In the case of the forum nokia components, it wasn’t quite this simple, they required me to download an additional library and manually add it to the classes folder. It would have been great if the MXP file had done this for me. A point to consider when designing your own components I feel – make it as simple as possible to start using components as quickly as possible. If an automated feature doesn’t take care of the whole install process, the entire process may as well be manual, since the automation tricks you into thinking its taken care of everything.

Installing components manually

In the absence of an MXP file (neither Shuriken nor the Adobe components came with MXP’s) I found I had to open up the .fla file of the component, copy the component into the .fla for my app, and then copy the class into my classpath. It works, but it feels hacky and I’m sure there’s a better way – perhaps just by making an MXP myself.

Creating and using components

Forum Nokia produced their guide to using and creating Flash Lite Components this June. This is an excellent guide and covers many of the topics I had planned to go into here. Read through it to learn how best to create and package your components for reuse. It covers topics I won’t go into here such as

• how to package MXP files, including custom icons and demos to display within the Flash IDE
• how to enable parameters which can be edited from within the IDE using the component inspector
• considerations when planning which features to include in your component

Skinning visual elements

The Nokia components have been designed to make it apparently easy to customise the components. Within the fla file visual elements are placed in a folder structure that can be copied so new skins based on the originals can be added. Providing they share the same names, linkage id’s and positions of the original skin, these new assets can easily be swapped for the originals to create a new skin, but you are restricted to the basic structure defined in the master component.

Where a number of states are used there is a folder for each state within the skin. Personally, I’d like to see a way of changing simple elements like colours dynamically to reduce the amount of visual elements required. The Shuriken Components seem to take this approach, drawing the components dynamically for all states instead of relying on visual assets.

The Nokia components also manage state by hiding the various states and swapping between them, which isn’t great for memory usage as it increases the amount of MovieClips on the stage at a given time. I’d experiment with removing them from the stage when they weren’t needed instead of hiding them.

Scaling visual elements

The Nokia Components visual elements are cut up so they are scalable, which means their width and height can be altered dynamically without distortion. This has been achieved by separating out intricate elements such as rounded corners, edges and base backgrounds. The AS Class that manages the component then looks for a placeholder movieclip the developer places within the stage and resizes all the visual elements using a scaling multiplier to match the dimensions of the placeholder.

The placeholder technique is a clever one, and a great idea for visual developers. It does mean more movieclips on the stage though, and places all the control in the hands of the Flash visual IDE. In our own apps, I would ensure the components could accept a width and height submitted to the AS Class using its API instead of relying on a placeholder, which would reduce the size of the final SWF and moves control of the components back into the apps Classes.

Since the Shuriken framwork uses dynamic resources these components also scale very nicely.

Targeting different devices

Nokia have considered device targeting, and use the placeholder technique combined with multiple frames to manage different sizes (its all explained in the guide to using and creating Flash Lite Components). I’m not a fan of adding frames into the stage, and would perhaps use a build process, perhaps with rake and MTASC to generate different swf’s with different resource sizes. That’s a blog post for another day for sure!

Conclusions

Nokia have done some great work in this field, laying the ground for people to develop custom components. However, I feel their components may be a little too bloated for many existing devices to cope with. I’d love to hear some feedback from them on this – do they not feel their recommended methods result in swf’s that are simply too large, and lead to high memory usage apps? There is no denying the ease of use and installation of these components though.

I feel that taking things forward, we can learn from both Nokia and Jesse Warden’s Shuriken Framework, the space is wide open for someone to come up with a well documented and useable yet relatively light and optimised framework and set of sample components for Flash Lite. Are you working on such a thing? Leave your comments and thoughts below. I’m off to work on my own ideas now!

Key references and people to follow…

• Forum Nokia
• Mark Doherty of Adobe
• Jesse Warden, Flex and Flash RIA dev
• Pinbadge Actionscript image care of Joe Pemberton of fellow mobile UI guys Punchcut http://www.flickr.com/photos/joepemberton/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
• Ribot, the mobile user interface team behind the project I’m working on that inspired this research – you’ll be hearing more about Flash Mobile components from us in the coming months methinks…

People often ask me how to get involved with the tech scene in Brighton either for social reasons, or to find work. This post should provide a place for me to direct them, and perhaps help anyone else wondering or perhaps even unaware there is such a scene.

Here are my top suggestions for getting involved…

1 – Attend an event

The easiest way to get started is to get along to an event. There a number of regular/semi regular events as well as one offs and occasional festival type events and conferences, I’ve listed them below along with frequency and price. Many of these are free, and some are more tuned to networking than others.

My advice – start with an event that has a focus (i.e. a speaker) and see who you can get talking to at the end, it's always better to deal with people in person instead of via a phone conference call. Complement this with some regular trips to The Farm which will get your face known by people you might bump into at some of the other events. You’ll soon find you know lots of people, and start getting introduced to others.

Weekly meetups

For those who just want to meet people and possibly find some work there is the Brighton Farm, a meetup for Freelancers, although anyone is welcome. There’s normally at least 10 people in attendence (often more), and it takes the form of sitting round a table in a pub for the first hour, so its easy to take a seat and get chatting to the person next to you – none of this walking up to people you don’t know. As the evening wears on it gets livelier, and subsequently harder to meet new people so a good tip would be to get there early. There’s always a good mix of regulars and newcomers, so you won’t be the only one. Check the website for details, but they always meet in a local pub at 7:30 – look for the people with the tech book on the table. Free to attend, no need to book.

FlashBrighton meets every Tuesday at The Werks, and focuses on a 1 – 2 hour presentation or workshop, often followed by drinks. It was originally aimed at Flash developers, although plenty of people who go along focus on other platforms as well, and the talks often focus on other platforms and areas. The quality of the talks is always high and as its weekly you can quickly get to know people by attending regularly. There’s a different crowd here to some of the other events so well worth popping along to and giving it a try. Free to attend but you must book.

Semi-regular meetups

There are plenty of occasional meetups to suit a wide range of interests. Pick one, or try them all out for size. The meetings generally take place at The Skiff or The Werks (so keep an eye on their sites for details of new groups), and have one or more speakers followed by a trip to a nearby pub where you can get chatting to people. Don’t forget to book tickets by going to the sites listed – these often sell out.

Here a selection:

£5 app features people demoing apps they’ve worked on in their spare time, or funded themselves. Often some fascinating stories come out of this meetup, and there’s lots to interest designers, developers and entrepreneurs alike. You can easily apply to do a demo on their site as well. Free to attend but you must book.

UX Brighton is essentially a mini 2 hour conference with a focus on crafting a great user experience. One or two speakers will present their thoughts and experiences with UX design, and explain how they or their companies achieved success (or failure) in the UX field. A top quality event for anyone with an interest in UX. Generally takes place in a local office, followed by pub. Free to attend but you must book.

Skillswap Brighton is organised by Clearleft and features an expert sharing some of their knowledge in their field, be it design, development or UX. Speakers are always excellent as they are carefully vetted by the Clearleft team who also organise world renowned events such as dConstruct and UXLondon. Another one that always sells out – keep an eye their site. Free to attend but you must book a ticket.

Conferences

Brighton plays host to a range of conferences which attract people from all over the world, so if your looking to connect with people from outside Brighton as well as locals, you don’t need to go far.

BarcampBrighton is an unconference, where everyone who attends gets a chance to speak. I helped to organise the last one and it was a great success. It takes place over a weekend and as such presents an excellent opportunity to connect with people over a longer period of time. Think tech conference meets weekend break. The next one is due in September 2009, at the university of Sussex. Free to attend but tickets are required.

dConstruct is one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. Organised by Clearleft, held at The Dome, single day event, the speakers are always world renowned, never pitch and always focus on interesting topics or aspects of design and development in web, mobile, gaming and more. This one pushes the boundaries of what makes a tech conference. Tickets from £120, next one in September.

Flash On The Beach is a three day event for Flash developers and designers, also held at the Dome, costs around £300. Next one in September.

Full Frontal is a new one day conference for Javascript people, its being held at The Duke of Yorks this October. £100.

2 – Work in a co-working space

One of the best ways to meet people is to work alongside them. Let them know what you specialise in, and they’ll be able to turn to you – literally – when they get that call. There are two spaces in Brighton which both allow you to drop in for the day to try them out for free, and then allow you to hot desk on a semi regular basis or rent a desk for a reasonable free. The Werks is in Hove and is the larger of the two, or try The Skiff for a cosier option in the North Laines. I’d say as the Skiff is smaller you’d be more likely to be noticed and get chatting to people there, but a wider range of people make their way through The Werks and there are several companies located inside it. Why not try both?

More suggestions anyone?

Digg have just launched a new feature called the Digg bar. To see this in action, put the url digg.com/ in front of any website, e.g. http://digg.com/http://bbc.co.uk. What this does is create a shortened URL, like tinyurl et al, and redirects you to that URL. You then see a toolbar embedded in the website which allows you do certain Digg related tasks.

This is a major f**k up. Here’s why:

1 – Its helping to break the web (along with tinyurl, bit.ly etc)

First and foremost as Jeremy Keith mentioned last week, URL shortening services break the web. They are great until the service owner decides to close them down, at which point you have broken links everywhere. The point of the web is that URLs remain in place, and if the owner of the site chooses to close the site, he can redirect them. The site owners should own the links, not a third party application.

2 – It could see your rank drop in Google

The Digg URL shortening service doesn’t redirect you to the original site when you click on the link, it puts you on the Digg site, and shows the original site inside a frame. This is how they get their toolbar in place. If anyone Diggs the link from the toolbar, it Diggs the site on their servers. This means the links won’t be considered to point to your site by Google, and you get no ranking increase or benefit. Where people would have previously linked to your site, they now link to Digg.

3 – It provides a bad user experience to users of your site

• When users visit your site via a Digg URL, they see that URL in the address bar
• If they follow a link on your site, the URL in the address bar remains unchanged
• If they want to bookmark the site in the Digg toolbar, they bookmark the URL they arrived on – regardless of the page they are on
• If they want to bookmark the site in their own bookmarking service (such as their browser, or a delicious plugin), they bookmark the Digg URL, and the page they arrived on, not the one they are currently on
• If they close the toolbar at any point, they are returned to the page they arrived on
• Here’’s the killer – if they leave your site, they still see the Digg URL, and would bookmark the URL they arrived on

In summary, this is a bad idea! Let’s hope it isn’t widely used, or Digg fix it soon.

In the meantime, here’s a post on how to remove the Digg bar from your blog.

This weekend I attended MobileCamp Brighton, thanks to the organisational skills of Dan W and hosted at The Skiff. It was a great event, and despite not costing a penny the quality of the speakers and topics far outshone those at most paid for industry events.

The focus of the event was Mobile, and talks and discussions primarily focused on mobile apps, how to devlop them, platforms we should be aiming for and future potential audiences.

Here are a few interesting snippets of what took place…

Natural UI

Flash Lite developer Carin Campanario from TUI showed us an interesting RSS widget which will be running on all Nokia N97 phones. As it is its an interesting design, focused on images rather than text and navigated using a gestural interface.

What was especially interesting however were Carin’s ideas on using some of the new Nokia S60m 5th edition API’s to access the accelerometer and camera.  She proposed turning the device on its side to navigate between items, and turning the device toward and away from you to trigger the text to appear and disappear. When bringing the device toward you the text could zoom in, and when moving it away, zoom out.

I’m not sure the technology is ready to manage all of these ideas efficiently, and lots of thought would have to go into not accidentally triggering them, and for who the features are aimed at (users who find it difficult to use touch might be ideal), but these ideas show real innovation.

One thing I like about ideas such as this is they help the app on the phone to behave more like a natural object, rather than something inside a phone. If we think of each image as a an object, lined up in a row with the others on a supporting structure, when the structure is tipped, the objects will naturally fall. Sam Machin took this one step further – proposing that the future of mobile development lies not in simply advancing technologically but in creating natural UI’s. I fully agree.

Mobile usage in majority world countries

Priya Prakash – formerly at Flirtomatic, gave a fascinating talk on mobile use in India. Will be checking out her panel at SXSW for sure. I was especially interested to learn about the blind guys who sit by the road operating as location aware data sources – you can ask them where the nearest cafe, payphone etc is – no need for a phone. Another popular behaviour is to leave messages with a local shop keeper and collect yours later – real life voice mail.

Encouraging ‘normobs’ to use Mobile Apps

The night before the event I spoke to a few of my friends about their views on mobile apps. I couldn’t find anyone who said they would be interested in downloading a mobile app of any kind, as they either weren’t interested, thought their phones weren’t good enough, didn’t know what mobile apps were, or were worried about the data charges.

I presented these rough and ready findings to the group, to spark a discussion based around the issue. The general feeling was that uptake in the UK could be increased by making apps more viral, and more easy to download for people without an iPhone or a G1 – i.e. from the phone, or even by text. Another issue I believe to be a major blocking is networks and app creators not being clearer on what the data charges might be relating to the app. We need to put people at ease.

F**k the iPhone

Terence Eden from Betavine spoke about the obsession developers have with developing for devices such as the iPhone and Android despite these being far from the most popular in the UK. He identified the Nokia 6300 as one of the most popular devices on the market, and one few people develop for.

One of the reasons people go for the iPhone is because its relatively easy to monetise. However, its hard to create quality apps for, and becoming increasingly difficult to get noticed in a flooded market. Conversely with the new version of Flash Lite its easy to get an app packaged for Nokia devices, and with the upcoming Nokia App Store potentially making it easier to monetise, perhaps the future lies in targeting more popular devices.