BlueskyNorth

England’s north-east has become a centre of excellence for Flash Lite mobile development, thanks to mobile specialists BlueskyNorth

BlueskyNorth was born in Newcastle in 2003 after its founders had become somewhat jaded with the work they had been doing in Flash at the turn of the century. In 2001, a fact-finding mission to San Francisco – Macromedia-land at the time – revealed that mobile could be a big deal in a few years, with mobile-optimised Flash– Flash Lite – the tool to take it forward.

“We knew that there wasn’t a market in existence at the time, so it was a bit of a leap of faith for us to get together on the understanding that probably there would be a market by the time we’d really learned our trade,” says the company’s communications director, Chris Petty, looking back.

And learned its trade it has. BlueskyNorth is now an authority on Flash Lite development. It is a go-to developer for Adobe and has a depth of experience developing games, user interfaces, wallpapers and applications for smartphones and feature phones. Now owned by Seattle interactive developer studio Smashing Ideas, BlueskyNorth also supplies Verizon and its mobile content delivery service Get It Now, powered by Qualcomm’s BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) technology. Audio device maker iRiver is also a client.

Currently there are five BlueskyNorth employees: three tend to focus on look-and-feel design and two on technical development. “But within that, we split our time doing things like business development, project management, and all the other good stuff that comes with it,” Petty chuckles. For those who are used to working with Flash, Flash Lite is a case of ‘it ain’t what you do but the way that you do it,’ given the devices’ display size, processor and navigational constraints.

“Legibility is a big issue and always is on mobile,” says studio manager Spencer Britton. “I know as a designer we tend to go for form over function, so we have to make sure that the most important things are delivered.” Petty adds: “It’s really about graphic optimisation, code optimisation, making sure performance really works, making sure the colours you use show properly on the screen. Obviously we have lower colour ranges on these machines.”

Thankfully, Adobe’s Device Central is a great help with this. Device Central is a set of resources, including handset simulators, for mobile development. The simulators accurately mimic the behaviour and capabilities of a broad range of handsets, enabling instant testing and feedback for coders and designers. “They’re pretty good but there’s always something that’s going to catch you out,” says Petty of the simulator resources. “That’s why we’ll tend to use them as a primary quality assurance (QA) device while you’re developing day by day, while you’re publishing and testing your movies, to check if there are any major bugs or flaws. But, before it goes too far, we’ll be looking to test on the actual handset.”

This flexibility is also reflected in the way the team approaches projects, according to Britton. Wallpapers, for instance, will tend to be put together by one- or two-person teams relatively quickly, as they are largely graphically based. For technically based products, BlueskyNorth takes on a consultancy role, demonstrating what is possible with the technology, scoping the project and carrying out relevant research and development. “Then we would bring a team together,” says Britton. “A team might consist of two technicians, a designer and a project manager. Then we would work together to produce various builds, and from there would follow an alpha and a number of betas going into QA and testing.”

Mobile is certainly going places, and BlueskyNorth’s experience means it can easily peek over the prow to see what lies ahead for Adobe’s mobile development tool. “Probably the big development with Flash Lite is that it’s starting to integrate a lot more closely with the actual handsets’ operating systems,” Petty reveals, citing a range of new handsets which enable Flash to bridge across to the Java operating system, enabling designers and developers to dig into the individual phone’s feature sets.

This has far-reaching implications, from the way users interact with media held on their phones – manipulating photos within the gallery, for example – to enabling Flash Lite to communicate with sensors within the phone itself. Nokia’s similar programme is underway. “There is a JavaScript element to a lot of the work we do,” Petty says. While some handsets don’t currently support Flash, Petty is certainly aware that C/C++ may have a larger part to play in his future than he thought back in 2003. “It’s not purely Flash being completely self-contained anymore. ActionScript has developed a lot over the years to being an object-oriented model, and it is a lot more capable and a lot closer to those sorts of languages than it was when we started designing and developing with the application.”

Given that the founders were after a challenge when they set up the company, it’s safe to say they got what they were looking for, with the rewards coming in the shape of new clients and exciting project briefs that result in genuinely cutting-edge mobile design work.

www.blueskynorth.com

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