Flash apps to be ported as .ipa native apps

Oct 6, 2009 07:54 GMT  ·  By

At Adobe’s worldwide developer conference, Adobe MAX, the Flash maker announced that Adobe Flash Professional CS5 would enable developers to create rich, interactive applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The company showcased a series of new iPhone applications built using a beta version of Flash Professional CS5. The software is expected to include a new text engine for creative freedom and control with text, enhanced capabilities for team collaboration on projects, prebuilt code snippets for rapidly adding interactivity, and integration with Adobe Flash Builder for advanced ActionScript editing.

“Adobe Flash Platform technologies open new opportunities for designers and developers by making it easy to target multiple operating systems and devices with the same application code base,” the company behind Flash says. “A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 is expected to be available later this year,” Adobe adds in a report.

During the MAX keynote presentation, Adobe offered a sneak peek into how developers could use Flash Professional CS5 to export applications for the iPhone. This means that, not only will Flash-savvy devs be able to create native iPhone apps from the ground up, but also that existing IPs can now be ported to Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

“We are ecstatic to announce that we’re enabling you to use your Flash development tools to build applications and compile them to run natively on the iPhone,” John Loiacono, head of Adobe’s Creative Solutions business unit, who made the announcement at Adobe Max, shares.

“What we’ve heard from our developers is that they want a way to get content on to the iPhone,” Heidi Voltmer, group product marketing manager of Adobe’s Creative Solutions business unit, explains. “They want to use their existing skills in developing Flash content to get that out there.”

“In some ways it’s more exciting, because they can actually charge for the apps and get revenue coming in,” Voltmer adds. “Apple’s going to be excited because they’ll see more revenue from all these new developers; and end-users get more choices.”

During yesterday’s presentation, Adobe also unveiled Flash Player 10.1. Support for the new version is expected to be available for mobile platforms including Google Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile. The company disclosed the reasons why the iPhone didn’t allow runtime interpreted code – Apple’s iPhone SDK license terms. As such, applications for the iPhone built with Adobe Flash Professional CS5 will not include any runtime interpreted code.