Flash Lite Now On The iPhone, Without Apple's Blessing

By Christian Zibreg, published on July 8, 2008 at 11:40 PM
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: , | Themes: Smartphones
Syndication: Add to your Google homepage Add to My Yahoo!

Chicago (IL) - We know that Flash will be supported on the iPhone sooner or later. All of those who don’t want to wait for Apple and Adobe to unveil an official version of the software, there is now a limited Flash Lite integration created by a Belgian developer.

While Apple and Adobe are still trying to figure out how and when to release Flash Lite for the iPhone, Thomas Joos from Belgium claims he has found a way to run Flash Lite on the iPhone using the b.Tween framework and the graphics tool eyeGT. The implementation allows Joos to run Flash content as a native iPhone application. However, the Flash Lite support does not to extend to the Safari browser, which means that Flash-based websites are still not displayed within Safari.

iPhone 3G

The state of Adobe’s Flash for iPhone efforts are unclear at this time. The company repeatedly said that it is working "closely" with Apple to find a solution that will not require Flash Lite to run as a browser plug-in or a background application. While Flash Lite uses processing resources and less battery power than the full Flash version, Flash Lite isn’t efficient enough to be used in an iPhone without significant code tweaks, we are told.

Processor and power concerns are the two primary issues believing to cause the delay of the application since Apple made it clear that it will not authorize Flash Lite for the iPhone until the multimedia web extension runs efficiently, without draining the battery too quickly.

Joos’ Flash Lite integration is not processor or energy-focused, but it does serve as an example that there are no coding barriers to bring Flash Lite to the iPhone. You can watch the Flash Lite running on an iPhone in this YouTube video.

Comments | Print | Send to a friend
Slideshows related to this news

Google Ads

Comments

velocityg4 07/09/2008 5:30 AM
Hide
-0+
velocityg4

I wish websites would just drop flash. It is slow and rarely looks any better than a well formatted html page. The worst is video embedded in flash. It's just strange that you could watch 320x240 video cd's I think with a 486 DX2 66mhz. But the same video embedded in flash on a web page will bring an 800mhz Pentium III to its knees.

gm0n3y 07/09/2008 8:18 AM
Hide
-0+
gm0n3y

I don't mind flash for some sites, like movie websites, or band websites. But yeah, for normal sites, flash is overkill and too slow.

Note You are going to post a comment as anonymous.



Google Ads