Flash Maps

A few ActionScript-based client-side maps: FlashDynamics and ModestMaps.

Best Practices for Performance and Memory for Flash Lite

Adobe Flash Lite online live seminar: Best Practices for Performance and Memory for Flash Lite and Developer Center article.

Some takeaways:

1. Help the garbage collector by explicitly deleting objects (e.g. XML) and setting local objects to null. It's unclear how setting local objects helps because the reference count should go to zero once it's out of scope.
   
2. fscommand2("GetFreePlayerMemory") returns the size of the largest contiguous block of memory that can be allocated by the player, not total free memory.

iTunes/iPhone's Cover Flow in Flash

http://www.n99creations.com/vieweg.php?id=5

Example that use Flash 8 features: AS2, more, and more.

Flash Lite Memory Size

Total available memory allocated by Flash Lite player, using
fscommand2("GetTotalPlayerMemory");

1. FL 2.1 (standalone), Windows Mobile 5: 4096KB
2. FL 2.0 (built-in), Nokia S60 FP3: 2297KB
3. FL 2.1 (standalone), Nokia S60 FP2: 2296K

ROM Images for HTC Tornado

The HTC Tornado has been branded as iMate SP5, Qtek 8310, Dopod 577W, etc. This page shows the various versions of ROM with download links from different manufactures. For example, you can flash a iMate SP5, which is English-only (2.5.331.2), to Chinese/English (and also get AKU 2.0) by flashing it to the latest Taiwan (2.5.37.0)/Singapore (2.5.39.2) Dopod ROMs.

SPV-developers.com has some useful utilities to SIM unlock and application unlock the phone after a ROM upgrade.

Cookie Support in Flash Lite Players

Cookie support in standalone Flash Lite players varies by platform. For Flash Lite content accessed through a web browser, cookie support will be provided by the web browser.

Here is a partial list of the platforms I've tested. I'll update them based on feedback and as I get access to more platforms.

Cookie support:

• FL 2.1 player on Windows Mobile

No cookie support:

• FL 2.0 player on Nokia S60 FP3 (N95)
• FL emulator (Adobe Device Central)

Flash Lite Player Error Codes

FlashDevices.net posted error codes for Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.

/// Flash Lite 2
1: Out of memory
2: Stack limit reached
3: Corrupt SWF data
4: ActionScript stuck
5: (there is no error code)
6: Bad image data
7: Bad sound data
8: Root movie unloaded
9: (there is no error code)
10: URL too long
11: Insufficient memory to decode image
12: Corrupt SVG data
13: Insufficient memory to load URL

Google Calendar Sync for Windows Mobile

Found GMobileSync to directly synchronize Google calendar with WM5 without a PC. It's open-source, too!

The first synchronization worked without a glitch after entering my login. There are a few limitations in the current, v1.2, release. For example, it only synchronizes the main calendar, and deletion is not fully supported. You'll need to delete on both ends before the next sync. Also, the timezone setting is not as intuitive as it could be. For example, you need to select "-7" in the Settings menu for the Pacific timezone.

Overall, it works and is open source. I look forward to the future enhancements.

ActionScript Editors

The ActionScript editor hasn't improved much in Flash CS3 compared to Flash Professional 8. For example, there is no auto-completion and refactoring support.

The two most popular ActionScript editors seems to be SEPY and FlashDevelop. Both are open-source and available for Windows, and SEPY recently released Mac builds as well.

Platform Detection in J2ME

J2ME provides system properties which can be used to detect the platform you're running on. This is useful for writing platform-specific code such as serial communication.

System.getProperty("microedition.platform");

On a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone, the IBM J9 VM returns "Windows CE 5.1,Smartphone" followed by the phone model. However, the built-in JVM returns "intent JTE" instead. On a Nokia N90, it returns "NokiaN90-1/5.0607.7.3".