Open-Plug’s ELIPS 3.0: Flex to native mobile device platform compiler (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian and more)
May 18th, 2009 by scottjanousek
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...Serge showed us a 3rd party product called ELIPS here at MultiMania, which is apparently a product in development by a company in France called Open-Plug.
“ELIPS, the first open software Framework and MMI designed for mass market phones. The Open-Plug ELIPS Product Suite relies on a unique component technology , which drastically simplifies and secures all the phases of mobile phone software development, integration and deployment.
It enables mobile operators and handset makers to create, update and customize their phones in record time, while keeping full control over their design and development cycle.”
Among the products features, is it offers a solution for Flex to compile to native iPhone native code (but allows for the possibility of Android, BREW MP, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux, and other platforms).
Apparently, Open-Plug presented at Mobile World Congress this year, and I’m surprised that no one (in the community) picked it up (although, I think its pretty obvious, why Adobe held off on reporting about it …).
Anyway, there’s a product marketing presentation video on vimeo.
ELIPS 3.0 05/04/09 from Open-Plug on Vimeo.
Open-Plug will also (potentially) send you a whitepaper if you sign up for more information on their website, www.open-plug.com.
“Open-Plug is introducing ELIPS 3.0 as a technology allowing efficient development of RMAs in Flex®, benefiting from all the upsides of RIA development technologies, while enabling massive deployments on mobile devices and allowing developers to exploit mobile features to the deepest level.”
Essentially it takes your Flex app (MXML, ActionScript) and compiles into either native or Java code on a target platform specified.
Here’s some video from MWC:
ELIPS from Enrique Duvos on Vimeo.
And finally, here’s an overview:
ELIPS 3.0 Overview from Open-Plug on Vimeo.
Sounds like the same idea behind B.Tween and Eye GT from Barefoot Soft.
If this product is 1/2 as good as it looks (and the performance is there), then this will make Flex Developers very happy. Whether or not it can deliver on providing on its promises, is TBD, since there appears to be no public beta at this stage.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Hi Scott,
thanx for the link, I prefer to respond here as my blog is currently down for maintenance (yeah, right…).
If you watch the video http://vimeo.com/3283705 , from minute 7:00 you can hear that the guy mention they have implemented a Flash Player so they could play also SWF content (you can also notice they mention that Flex is only partially supported and so on). So, it is not clear when this C++ compilation happens and what is useful it is useful for, considering that there is still an interpreting player executing the code. In any case, seems more similar to the MMI enabled version of the FlashLite Player so that’s probably the reason why Adobe doesn’t mention it
(by the way the guy asking info in that video is from Adobe….).
I believe it is interesting for phone manufacturers that want to build their handset’s interface using known tools and are already using Open Plug for their RTOS (but IMHO, the UI graphical subsytem of Mentor Graphic’s Nucleus is far more advanced), but why would you bother with 3rd party Flash Players if you can have access to the original one and deploy it for free? On the other side, eyeGT/b.Tween do not implement a player or interpreter and that’s why we are fully compatible with the iPhone SDK, as a plus, it ships along the application as we don’t require a pre-installed or, worse, a manufacturer installed runtime.
Regarding the performance, it will be interesting to see how it perform on handsets different from the Win Mobile and how it cooperates with native elements of interface (what’s the point of reinventing everything if what the handset gives you is already nice and users are aware of it?)
May 19th, 2009 at 5:29 am
I wondered how long it would take this one to hit the wire, and i was holding the camera
The good news is that I have invited them to speak this year at MAX, by which time they should be on more platforms and enabled some new features.
Very much looking forward to seeing!
Mark
May 19th, 2009 at 7:02 am
The more I was reading the post, the more I was getting happy.
But when I checked their website I realized it is not released yet.
Grrr.
In the meantime I signed up to receive the white paper.
If they do what the promise this ‘tool’ will rock.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Very interesting stuff.
There was similar kind of tool named Animoi Content Converter, which converted SWF to J2ME mobile apps. Macromedia bought the company and discontinued the product :/
This one is a bit different, but it looks a bit of competitor to Flash Lite. Let see how it goes
//chall3ng3r//
May 19th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I’m the dev lead of this product at Open-plug, I’m glad to see some enthusiasm over here!
@Emanuele Cipolloni : we are located in Sophia-Antipolis, near Nice, you are in Monaco is that true? if so we really have to get in touch.
@Mark we are progressing fast here
A closed alpha with few selected partners is about to be launched to gather some first feedbacks. I’m still not sure if I’ll be personally at MAX or not.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Hi Mark – I was there discussing with you and Enrique
Thanks for the invite to speak at MAX! We’ll be there.
Thanks Scott for the post!
Hi Emanuele, and sorry if it was not clear enough in the video:
There is no flash player in our product, the code is not interpreted, we generate executable code. What we were mentioning in the video (and that’s what created the confusion) is that, if the Flex application contains some Flash content, then we can use the platform’s flash player to execute this flash content. But the Flex application itself is generated as executable code for the target platform when pushing the “build target installer” button. So it’s really like: develop your application in Flex, and get the performance of native code. It is precisely not our purpose to develop another flash or flash lite player!
This product does not require anything to be preloaded either – it’s also shipped with the application, inside the installer package (it can be pre-installed by the phone maker as an option, but that’s another story!).
About performance, you can actually see in the video (~at minute 3:15) the application run on a development platform based on an ARM9 at 200MHz, with no hardware graphic acceleration. This platform is really what you would find on a low- to mid-range phone today.
And lastly, I join Thomas to say that, if you’re in Monaco, you’re closeby, and we should meet!
May 20th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Hi all
Let me first introduce myself: I am the product manager for this ELIPS 3 product (and no its not me in the video…)
Just a quick post here to answer some basic points raised by Scott in his article and others in the comments.
@Scott : thanks for your enthusiastic article and for the link to eyeGT which I was not aware of. Also thanks for posting Mark’s video recorded at MWC. We did not want to publicize the product too much beyond live demos at MWC since it is still early days
@Emanuele: regarding your comment about “they have implemented a Flash Player so they could play also SWF content”. There is a misunderstanding here. What we say at that point in the video is that we can rely on a Flash Player already present on the platform should the application developer want to render some SWF assets (rich animations). We have NOT developed a Flash Player clone. Our technology plays a complementary role to Flash by allowing Flex developers to create rich mobile applications using MXML and the Flex framework. Their code then gets compiled to native binaries that execute at native performance. Our approach seems similar to eyeGT which I am not familiar with actually… lets talk more about this offline
@Mark: Thanks for the MAX invite
@Cesare: thanks for your enthusiasm. You should have received the white paper by now. It describes our vision for this product. We will have the beta program opened this summer. If you are interested in participating in it, please get in touch.
In order to understand better our user’s needs and views on mobile applications development, we have created an online survey to which you are all most welcomed to participate: http://openplug.mobileappsdev.sgizmo.com/
May 20th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Hi all, thanks for clarifying. Interesting stuff indeed, I may have a few more questions but as Guilhem suggested I’ll keep them offline.
Only a couple of things which maybe of general interest: why Flex is explicitly mentioned and not Flash content in general? Does it means it can compile only ActionScript3 based content? Is the converted C++ code compiled directly by the tool or with the platform designated SDK?
May 25th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Emanuele, all,
I sense that this blog post is gradually transforming into a FAQ for our forthcoming product … Full FAQs will be available in due course when we open our public beta.
Please be patient, we are hard at work on setting everything up and finalising the beta release. Answers to your questions will be available then.
Thanks in advance for your understanding
October 15th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Hello all readers,
Following our announcements at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles last week (see our session at: http://max.adobe.com/online/session/271), the beta release of our ELIPS Studio 3 development environment for rich mobile applications in Flex is now available as part of our early developer program.
You can test drive it by registering at http://developer.openplug.com/ and then downloading the release.
On our site you’ll also find tons of infos including FAQs, tutorials and a very active Forum.
Enjoy !