A Plethora of Flash at the New Adobe Labs!

 
Jan 06, 2006

by Judith Dinowitz

2006 is barely a week old, and Adobe started it off with a bang. This week Adobe announced the immediate availability of Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7, and at the same time, launched the new Adobe Labs site with an update for Flash Professional 8. The deliberate combination of these two announcements makes Adobe look like a company that goes out there and does stuff, and also promotes their interaction with the community, whom they need to court. The timing of the announcement, only a few weeks after the close of the merger and at the beginning of the new year, is brilliant. In this article, I've compiled the information from both of Adobe's press releases, to give you a better sense of what they're doing and to get past the "market-ese" you'll find in most press releases.

The Improved Flash Mobile Initiative: Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7

Adobe described these two products as "the essential technologies for building rich, engaging mobile and device experiences based on Flash technology." Flash Lite 2 is a major new release of the Flash Player for non-PC devices, bringing rich user interfaces to mobile phones and consumer electronics devices worldwide. Flash Player SDK 7 is the Flash Player optimized for consumer electronic devices, "enabling consumer electronics manufacturers, system integrators and browser companies to create high impact products and services, with full web browsing capabilities, that leverage the vast number of Internet sites featuring Flash content." Basically, SDK 7 is supposed to give you a better mobile Flash-enabled Internet experience.

In their press release, Adobe claimed that Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 "can reduce deployment costs and deliver content and interfaces three to five times faster than competing solutions." (The press release does not explain what competing products they tested these tools against.) Both products are built on Flash Player 7, and include ActionScript 2 support, Unicode support for international markets, tighter device integration, persistent data management, reduced memory consumption and improved XML data handling.

Adobe said they anticipate that devices powered by Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 will be available later this year. A number of the world's largest device manufacturers are currently shipping Flash technology-enabled mobile phones and consumer electronics devices, including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Kodak, Reigncom and more.

Shipments of mobile devices running Flash have more than tripled, from 12 to 45 million units within the last twelve months. For more information, and to learn how to license Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7, visit http://www.macromedia.com/mobile.

Flash Professional 8 Update and the Launch of Adobe Labs

At the same time, Adobe also released an update to Flash Professional 8, available for preview on the Adobe labs site (http://labs.adobe.com). The update allows mobile designers and developers to take advantage of the new capabilities of Flash Lite 2. (The update makes a lot of sense; what use is a new product if thousands of designers who are developing in Flash Professional 8 can't take advantage of any of its capabilities?)

Subsequently, on January 5, Adobe officially announced the launch of the Adobe Labs website. Here they emphasized the continuation of what Macromedia was doing with Macromedia Labs. When Macromedia first started this in October 2005, the company was embracing a much closer relationship with its developer community by allowing their customers to use tools that were in the beginning stages of development. Like Macromedia Labs, Adobe Labs will allow developers experience, evaluate, and share feedback about new and emerging Adobe innovations, technologies, and products before they go to market. In return, Adobe will benefit from insightful feedback and the opportunity to make adjustments to product strategy before shipping.

Besides the Flash Player 8 update, Adobe Labs allows you to download Alpha versions of the Flex(TM) product line and Flash Player 8.5, the beginning of an "ever-expanding roster," according to Adobe.

"Feedback from our developer and customer communities is essential to delivering compelling products," said Kevin Lynch, Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect of Adobe. "Adobe Labs fosters community involvement early in the product development cycle, enables access to emerging technologies and ultimately helps to build better products."

You can see the strategy at play here. This is absolutely what Adobe needs to do right now. They need to build loyalty and close communication with a customer base that doesn't yet know them, and that is skeptical at best, and suspicious at worst, of Adobe's ability to "do good" by their products. The launch of Adobe Labs with the new update to Flash Professional 8 will help to cement that.

I'm sure you'll want to read more about this. I've included some of the sources below for your benefit.

New Flash Technology From Adobe Enables High-Impact User Experiences For Consumer Devices (Adobe.com, January 3, 2006)

Adobe Announces Proliferation of Flash Enabled Products Across Consumer Electronics Industry (Adobe.com, January 3, 2006)

Adobe Labs Delivers Early Access to Emerging Technologies (Adobe.com, January 5, 2006)

Adobe Labs

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