We all want the iPhone to support Flash, this was probably the reason that made many believe that iPhone 3G would support Flash by reading too much between the lines when Steve Jobs gave the demo on the new iPhone 3G during his Keynote address at Apple's WWDC 08 event.
But Thomas Joos is a developer with a difference, he has ported an application built in Flash Lite to run on the iPhone.
You can read how he has managed this after the jump.
Rock Werchter Mobile Guide is a mobile handbook for one of the worlds biggest and most popular music festival: Rock Werchter. Thomas Joos wanted to bring this app built in Flash Lite to iPhone users but the issue was that iPhone does not support Flash Lite. To workaround this limitation of the iPhone, he has managed to port the mobile handbook app into an application written for some other runtime so that it could run on the iPhone.
So if you are wondering how did he manage this, then here are some details via iPhone Atlas:
The port uses a framework that sits on top of eyeGT, a graphic renderer capable of handling vector graphics and bitmaps. eyeGT allows definition of buttons, animations, hierarchical containers, color and special effects, and the like. It works on the iPhone/iPod touch as well as several other mobile devices. Joos created a framework called b.Tween that allows easy conversion of applications to ActionScript, a scripting language used for Flash development. The result is native, Flash Lite-compliant code that is passed through eyeGT for rendering.
As per Joos:
"Native code can access any feature of the hosting platform: wants Bluetooth? Wants to process received SMS? Wants to read the phone book? All possible from native applications not so from a player based one.”
You can checkout the video clip of the iPhone app below:
You will need a jailbroken iPhone to download and install Rock Werchter Mobile. You can follow these instructions on your hacked iPhone:
1. Launch the Installer application
2. Select “Sources” on the bottom of the screen (1st icon from the right)
3. Select “Edit” at the top of the screen (close to the right side of the screen)
4. Select “Add” at the top of the screen (close to the left side of the screen)
5. In the box that appear, type “http://repo.barefootmobile.com” (without the double quotes) and tap “OK” button
6. The Installer application will check the sources, refreshing them and if everything goes well, the list of Sources will be displayed again
7. Select “Done” at the top of the screen (close to the right side of the screen)
8. Select “Install” on the bottom of the screen (2nd icon from the left)
9. In the list of Categories, find an item called “Barefoot b.Tween Demos” and tap on it
10. At the moment you will find only one item listed under the “Barefoot b.Tween Demos” category, this is the werchter app ported to the iPhone/iPodTouch, tap on the “Werchter” item
11. Select “Install” at the top of the screen (close to the right side of the screen)
12. Click on the red button that says “Install”
Now thats really cool, this is a great example of "Necessity is the mother of inventions", let us know what you think about it in the comments.
[Source: iPhone Atlas via Thomas Joos's blog]
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I may be a minority of one in this, but I do NOT want flash on my iPhone! I enjoy web pages free of flickering animated crap and clutter. Also, have you noticed the memory foot print and CPU usage of flash? Good bye battery life.
Really, What good is flash aside from the occasional video site or some games? Web designers over use it by a tremendous amount resulting in epileptic seasure inducing pages that make it hard to find real information.
This may change with time, but for now, flash? no thank you…
I agree with Kevin to a certain extent.
There are too many designers and site owners who promotes the over use of FLASH on their sites. I particularly hates the sites which are all written in FLASH and do not have alternative versions.
Having said that, there are occasions where FLASH can lend to better usability of a web site, but we are talking about sparingly use of FLASH for certain UI elements. With the introduction of AJAX techniques, this need is growing smaller and smaller.
As long as there are large number of web sites still using FLASH, there will be a need for the iPhone to support FLASH in Mobile Safari.