Adobe announced today that Flash developers will be able to create applications that run natively on the iPhone, but the ability to have Flash plugged into Safari remains missing.
During the keynote of the company's Max conference in the United States, Johnny Loiacono, Adobe senior vice president of its creative solutions business unit, demonstrated the ability to export an application to the iPhone having been built within Adobe Flash Professional CS5.
Adobe's chief technology officer Kevin Lynch said that Adobe needed Apple to support the APIs required to implement Flash within the iPhone's Safari browser. "When Apple is ready to bring the full web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari," Lynch said.
Lynch also launched Flash Player 10.1 during the keynote. Unlike previous versions of Flash where there existed a split between desktop Flash and mobile Flash called Flash Lite, the full 10.1 version is set to be deployed across desktops, smartphones and devices. Vendors such as Google, RIM and Palm have joined the Open Screen Project to bring Flash to their devices.
With the expansion to mobile devices, 10.1 has reduced the memory usage across all platforms and increased phone battery life on its predecessor. Lynch said that 10.1 would "respect the RAM in devices and PCs" and claimed an approximate 50 per cent reduction in RAM usage between Flash 10.1 and Flash 10.
As HTML 5 evolves and replicates portions of Flash's functionality, such as the ability to play videos, Lynch said that Adobe would rely on the consistency of the Flash environment and its tool productivity to give it a leg up on HTML 5.
Other new features in Flash 10.1 are multi-touch capabilities, HTTP video streaming, content protection measures and peer-assisted networking.
The other major software announcements in the keynote revolved around Adobe's AIR, a platform for applications such as TweetDeck. AIR 2.0 would support USB device detection, native application launching, reduced RAM consumption and microphone support.
According to Lynch, the goal with AIR was to also take it onto smartphones and provide an environment where applications could be written once, but run on multiple smartphones.
Chris Duckett travelled to Adobe Max as a guest of Adobe.
