So we are going to open up Flash 8 and see how authoring mobile specific content is pretty much exactly the same as far as the authoring environment is concerned as creating switch files for the web. We are going to be working with some project files throughout this course and they are probably like headed on your Desktop or else way you specifically installed them during the install process with the Total Training DVD. So let us open up Flash 8.
This is the Flash 8 authoring environment. It is exactly the same for creating mobile content as it is for creating Flash content for the web. There is a couple of things there in Flash 8 that are specific for mobile content development and one of those is the mobile templates. When we start a new document, we can actually start from a mobile template. So let us do that. From the File and then New command, we can see we got a list of templates and one of them is Global Phones. Within that category, we have got Flash Lite 1.1 Symbian Series 60. And, this is going to be a template that opens up with some specific parameters already set for the Symbian Series 60 files.
As you can see, we have got Flash authoring environment open and it has already set something for us like the Stage Size, the Publish settings, the Device settings and some action script already for us too. You can see down in the Property Inspector at the bottom of the screen that we have got some specific things for Flash Lite. One of those is the Publish settings. If we click on Publish settings, we get the Publish settings dialog box open which has got some Flash Lite version options and some other Flash specific options that we can choose. I am actually just going to change the version to 2.1 and click okay. The other option that we have down in the Property’s Inspector is the Device settings. The Device settings dialog box is where we can set up all of the attributes for the mobile emulator which we will get to in a minute. These sorts of things includes schemes for the phone, phone specific attributes so that we can test for memory issues and things like that and also, what type of content that we are creating.
At the top of the Device settings dialog box, we have got a Content Top Option. If we click on that, we can see all of the different types of Flash Lite content that are currently supported by phone somewhere in the world. Generally, it is going to be stand alone player. The Nokia Series 65 phone supports this stand alone player option with their implementation of Flash Lite. We can also use this content draft to select things like Wallpapers or Standby screens or other top to Flash Lite content that we can create. I am just going to leave it at Standalone Player for the time being. We can also choose from the other devices that support Flash Lite from the list over on the left. We can go down through manufactures or types of operating systems that find support and this allows us to use attributes of the selected finds in the mobile emulator. So let us have a look at that emulator now.
When we have a Flash document open and we are using one of the Flash Lite to export to, it is going to automatically know that we are trying to create a mobile application and launch the mobile emulator. If we test our movie going by a Control and Test Movie, we can see now that some of the device and publish settings that we have used have helped to create this mobile emulation of the content. We have got the phone that we selected. In this case, the Nokia 6630 and it has got a skin over there on the right which we can actually interact with throughout the case. It is also some other information that is really important for our Flash Mobile Suite. Things like the stage size so that we know that we are using the right stage back in our original Flash Movie. How big the size is so that we can make sure that it is not getting too big for our phone and so not put options there that will determine what gets the trace to the output window when we test our Flash Movie.
So the mobile emulator is really a key part of the Flash 8 authori
