Posts tagged ‘Flash’
litl Channel views explained and target dimensions for Flash content posted
The developer blog over at litl has a posting covering the various target screen dimensions for various views that can be found on the litl when in various modes of the device.
Card View
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“Think of Card View as the minimized, mini-app version of the channel. Living as a ‘card’ on the litl OS home screen, users can glance at updated sports scores, see latest video/episodes available and even scroll through images respective to whatever content/service the Channel is built around. For games, Card View can display top scores or inform of other users online looking to play.”
It’s kind of like cardview when you’re viewing content on a webOS mobile device, like the Palm Pre. Albeit, it’s not touch. You have cards and arrange those cards. It’s very intuitive. I just wish it was touch to boot. 
Focus View
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“When the litl is in laptop mode and the card has been opened, the Channel displays in Focus View. This is where the user can interact with the Channel content using the webbook’s keyboard and trackpad. The size of this View is basically a full screen instance of the Channel, with the litl OS Taskbar on top. The Options panel is something that can be invoked from within this View, so the user can adjust settings/properties of the Channel.”
This is the mode you’d typically expect widget content to run like. It’s like browser mode without the browser. It’s the standalone mode for Flash content on the litl.
Channel View
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“When the litl is in easel mode and a Channel is open or selected, the Channel displays in Channel View. Designed to be more of a passive experience, only the GoButton and Wheel controls (also accessible with the optional webbook remote) can control the Channel. This View is ideal for sitting back, watching video or seeing the latest headlines, tweets and status scroll through the screen. As with the Bakespace Recipes Channel, this View is also great for simplifying content display and interaction, where the user can page up and down or browse easily through information.
When building a Channel, you can use the ViewChanged event to adapt your Channel to whicever view the device calls for. Using pre-built containers, like mx:ViewStack in Flex, it is simple to setup layouts in your application that correspond to each View in the Channel.”
It’s reminiscent of the Front Row mode on a macbook, but it’s cooler and it holds all your customized channel content so you can pick and select from the carousel of content. The scroll wheel comes in really handy here.
The litl has a pretty awesome LED display. I recommend developers pick one up and check out the UI. Although the Views are not touch enabled right now, they may be in the future. Despite that, the interaction between the UI and user is pretty easy with the GO Button, scroll wheel,trackpad, and keyboard.
BFPUG April 28 meeting at litl HQ in Boston’s Back Bay
Boston Flash Platform User Group is going to be hosted at the litl office’s next week. Attendees will get to do some hands-on with the litl.
Finally, get your hands on the litl webbook!
Join us at litl’s HQ right in Boston’s Back Bay.
We’re ordering some amazing food, so plan to have dinner at the meetup.We’ll cover topics related to the new litl Flash SDK and you will get to play with and learn how to code for the litl webbook!
litl launches NPR news channel (streaming radio)
litl has launched a new NPR channel that allows customers to stream news and other audio programs from NPR on their litl.
It’s pretty sweet if you’re into radio and streaming audio while you work or do other things (e.g. make dinner in the kitchen, etc).
Big Flash experiences on a litl device
One of the litl team members, Kathryn Rotondo has shared some information about how Flash is utilized to drive the Flash side of the user experience on the first litl device, in a post called “how litl and actionscript became BFFs”.
Apparently, litl supports *both* Flash Lite, as well as Flash Player 10. However, it depends on the mode you place the litl in. Flash Lite is used for channel content when in “easel mode”. When a user is surfing around in webbook mode, the browser supports Flash Player 10 for Flash content consumption on the web.
In regards to Flash Lite capabilities, looks like Calsoft created a custom Flash Lite 3.x implementation for the device. It supports hardware video acceleration, and bitmap caching support. Other the end spectrum, I’m hearing reports from inside litl, that the Flash Player 10 supports microphone, camera, and plays video very well.
The device can do H.264, fullscreen on a 1280 px x 800 px screen with a 178 degree viewing angle. Pretty impressive. Plus, the display is LED backlit. I can tell you first hand that the gorgeous display is probably one of the top reasons why this device is priced so high … but once you see it in action, you’ll notice immediately the quality over lesser netbooks on market (or at least the ones I’ve seen shipping in US).
In regards to Flash Lite channel content development there are three views (card, full, and channel views). From what I recall cards are individual apps (like on the Palm Pre), “full” is where the app is fullscreen mode, and “channel view” is a user interface where all your channels appear and can be selected.
“we’ve written a straightforward protocol to connect the channel with the device over an XML socket.
the channel can make requests (to initialize its title bar or set properties) and receive events (such as notice that the user has flipped the device into easel mode, followed by go-button and scroll-wheel actions).
we’re wrapping up all this goodness into an SDK to open up the fun, innovative, and rewarding world of channel development to the actionscript community. third-party developers, stay tuned!”
Looking forward to developing for this Flash enabled device.
litl unboxing video
litl has put an unboxing video online.
litl unboxing from litl on Vimeo.
I should be getting mine any day now.
