FlashLite 1.1: No File Support?!?!
Check out this presentation over at Flash Devices. It was (will be?) presented at Macromedia's MAX conference and is called "Creating Dynamic Applications with Flash Lite 1.1". It's got a neat overview of the technology and shows some sample ActionScript code for accessing the web or sending an SMS.
Pretty neat, except slide 10 tells us that you *can't save data to the handset!!* Nothing. Nada. Not even J2ME RMS-style sandboxed data. Every time you start your Flash Lite app on your phone, it's completely state-free. Wow... that's just dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Flash Lite really had a chance to meet that "middle ground developer" need I've been talking about for years now. More access than J2ME, but not the complexity of native C++ code. Instead, Macromedia has obviously bent to the carrier's will, and instead Flash Lite has been hobbled from the start. As a developer (though not a Flash developer, admittedly) I have to say that sort thing drives me nuts. it drives me crazy in J2ME, but the fact that this sort of stuff is happening in a newer "platform" like Flash just gives me fits.
By the way, in case you missed it - the last time I bitched about Macromedia a week or so ago, I got a truly gracious response from the CEO of Macromedia Rob Burgess himself in my comments. That was very cool - though I'm such a bonehead I forgot to email him and thank him for taking his time to correct any misunderstandings. It almost makes me feel bad about picking on MM again, but like I've said before - it's only because I've seen Flash Lite and seen how amazing the apps written for it can be and want it available as soon as possible, in the broadest number of phones with the most capabilities it can have. There's definitely a frustration level waiting for it to arrive, and then reading about its basic - and uneeded - limitations like no file access.
-Russ