Adobe Systems Inc. on Tuesday introduced Macromedia Flash Lite 2 and Macromedia Flash Player SDK 7, the latest versions of software products that let users of mobile phones and consumer electronics devices view Web sites that use Flash.
Flash Lite 2, a Flash player for non-PC devices, and Flash Player SDK 7, the Flash player for consumer electronics devices, will allow device makers and operators to offer customizable user interfaces and offer consistent experiences to users of a variety of devices that may have different operating systems, processors and screen sizes. Designing applications that look good on a range of devices that may vary in size and capability is a common problem particularly among developers of Web sites and applications designed for mobile device users.
Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 are built on Flash Player 7 so they support Unicode for international markets, reduced memory consumption, persistent data management and improved XML (Extensible Markup Language) data handling, according to Adobe. Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 can lower deployment costs and speed up content delivery, Adobe said.
Mobile phone makers including Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB currently ship phones that allow users to view sites created with Flash. As many as 45 million mobile devices running Flash shipped during 2005, according to Adobe. Devices running Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 are expected to hit the market later this year.
Flash is technology from Macromedia, the company recently acquired by Adobe, that enables multimedia content to be displayed and viewed on Web sites.