Conceptually Slider will hopefully (Adobe says feature set is not final and implementations may change or be removed before the product is launched) work in a similar fashion to our existing Flex based applications, only with a few differences/additions:

• Screen – Navigation in mobile Flex will very likely be screen based, like html, navigate from one screen to the next
• NavigationBar – The screen component has a navigationBar property where a navigation class can be specified
• Toolbar – another mobile specific component which can be used to give the user access to functionality like search and other top level items which can be used at any time while the application is running
• SoftKeyBar – Some phones has softkeys, and this will make it possible for Flex to use these as part of for example navigation, log out etc.
• Mobile specific components like: MobileList
• Conditions – This seems to work very similar to how states in Flex 4 function, using includeIn, where the condition can be for example platform type, e.g. Nokia xxx or iPhone, orientation of the screen.
• ToolBar and Softkeys can also potentially be skinned automatically to blend in with the chrome on the device

Since mobile is a very different platform to desktop and web, with the number of different devices and vendors, it is difficult to create a “one-fits-all” application, therefore Adobe are looking at making it easier to work with for example different screen sizes and screen resolutions. They want to make it easier to specify the size of elements, using touch screens for example will be very difficult if areas are specified in pixels, so instead we should be able to use centimeters, cm units.

One thing that was mentioned a few times were the importance of respecting the device the application was developed for, and how user patterns on mobile devices differ from desktop and standard web applications. With mobile, and iPhone has already proven this, it is important to cache data, so the user can open and close applications without loosing the state, and at any time come back to where they were.

The one thing that was reassuring to hear was that the key goal for Flex Mobile to be successful; was that it has to perform well. There are a couple of ways to look at this, perceived performance and memory consumption. When it comes to memory, they are looking at introducing a destructionPolicy on components, sounds like something we have asked for to get in standard Flex too , basically a component can be set to destruct immediately, later: deferred, or handled by the framework: auto. With the improvements in Flash Player 10.1 which were announced, memory consumption in general also seems to be handled better, with a reduction of up to 50% when certain components are used. Not everything is left to the framework, take view nesting for example, it will still be important to keep the hierarchy as shallow as possible to make the application perform.

As a last note, iPhone was mentioned multiple times, and also used to demo the application they showed in the presentation. And as Ely and Greg Burch said, it will very likely be one of the supported devices.

A recording of the session can be found here Preview: Flex for Mobile Devices

I was introduced to the concept a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say I was a bit surprised at first, but it really makes sense. If it is possible to create native applications in another language, why not, conceptually it is not that far from AIR anyway.

It will be interesting to see the reactions from Apple. Secondly, how easily can we reuse code from already existing projects that we now want to distribute to the iPhone.

• Mosaic – RIA portal
• Cloud deployment on Amazon EC2
• LC ES Collaboration Service (formerly CoCoMo and Flash Collaboration Service)
• Flash Builder 4 and LCDS integration

Mosaic looks really interesting, especially if you already have a number of Flex applications. With Mosaic you can now manage all these in one user interface, and they can be configured to expose business logic. I had a look at the product earlier this year, and it was really interesting to see how easy it was to create a unified application front-end with minimal effort.

From early 2010 it will be possible to get a hosted LC ES2 service in the Amazon Cloud, this should really help on getting projects set up quickly. Leveraging some of the PDF functionality and the collaboration services that easily could be a benefit to a lot of project which only need some of the functionality LC ES2 gives. The collaboration services seems to offer a lot of functionality which is previously not that easy to get; VoIP, Chat, Whiteboarding and live file sharing to mention some.

And last but not least – Data Modeling, the new integration in Flash Builder is very promising, and it is almost like working with Ruby On Rails , at least when it comes to productivity. Not sure how easy it will be to use this for larger scale projects, but so far I haven’t seen anything significant that could let us down.

Public voting has started and is available at http://max.adobe.com/awards/finalists/ , the voting will be live until Tuesday, October 6 when winners will be announced at the event.