Pocket Flash

A. When it’s bundled with active content.

So I finally got my ACS publishers ID from verisign, and as I thought the next step is to follow the instructions to download your certificate and replace it for the developers *.cert file we used to create a dev .sis for testing.

So I finally had my .sis signed with an ACS publishers ID and everything, all that was left to do was to upload my application through the Symbian signed website it’s fairly self explanatory, but in the interests of documenting everything I’ll blog that too at a later date.

Onto the passive / active saga

A day or so after I submitted my application I received this response from the testing house:
We have received your application and for your interest, we performed a free
basic check for it.

During the basic check, we observed that the application needs connect to
network but privacy statement for it is missing.

According to Symbian Signed criteria (CON-02), there are two display modes
for Privacy Statement as following and either of them can meet the Symbian
Signed criteria,

Mode 1: Privacy Statement is displayed at the first ever launch of the
application and after user confirmed the statement, it will not prompt again
for subsequent runs.

Mode 2: A checkbox can be made available in Privacy Statement to enable the
user to disable the prompt for subsequent runs. Or a query dialog text can
be used instead of the checkbox.

Following is Best Practice for privacy statement,

TITLE: For your information

BODY: This application will make use of the following features of your
phone. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at

e-mail address>:

Bluetooth to connect to other Bluetooth-enabled devices
Sending SMS messages
Sending MMS messages
Making phone calls
Making a connection to the Internet
Allowing you to add or edit contacts
Reading existing information from your contacts database
Recording sounds using your phone’s microphone

TICKBOX: Do not show me this information again

Could you please kindly have a double check?

The main problem here is that as Flash Lite 1.1 has no way of storing persistent data it is pretty stateless in terms of, a .swf file doesn’t know if it’s been open before. This makes creating a mandatory ‘TICKBOX: Do not show me this information again’ impossible.

Anyway here’s my reply:

This is a very interesting point and one I guessed might appear. You may remember we have been talking about this idea of an engine a content only this week.

My application falls into two parts:

pocketflash.exe which is active and contains only code to launch the second part

pocketflash.swf which is classed as passive content and therefore exempt from CON-02

It is the pocketflash.swf that asks for a connection to the internet not the .exe In fact as it is the Flash Lite player application that makes the call to the internet, is it not therefore the Flash Lite player which must contain the privacy statement and not my application?

I look forward to your response.

The next reply said that as this was a special case they would seek advice from the Symbian signed team, I thanked them and waited patiently.

Ten days later I got this

Sorry for the late response.

We have got the feedback from Symbian Signed team. As they suggested, the
Privacy Statement is required for your application. For more details, please
kindly find below feedback from Symbian,

Quote:
You will require a privacy statement, this is stated in the Test
Criteria(CON-03), it does not really matter what sort of file connects to
the internet, the file in questions must be getting invoked by an .exe
somewhere in the process.

All types of applications must adhere to the Symbian Test Criteria, this
also includes Flash type applications as well.

Please feel free to contact us, if you would like to resubmit a new version
for testing. We will reject this round without charge.

Okay so now I’m a bit annoyed, it feels like Symbian don’t really understand what is actually going on here, what’s a ‘Flash type application’ anyway? Flash is passive according to the Symbian website. This could be worked around, in theory the .exe could give the privacy statement, but I have no idea how to do this (I imagine this goes for most Flash developers) and I’m more interested in the principle, if I resubmit this application without the .exe through the passive route, will it still be tested as an active application?

So I sent a finally email with the following:
This is a real blow as Flash is unable to store persistent data and
therefore is unable to know if it’s the first run of the application or
not.

I thought that, that was it, either figure out, or pay for someone to develop a privacy statement built into the launcher .exe or give in and submit a passive .swf without the launcher and menu icon, until I got this ray of hope:

…we have received the update from our contact in Symbian, they
would like to double check with manufacture about the issue.

We will inform you once receive their feedback.

What? eh? hmmm.

manufacture?

Could they possibly mean Adobe? I’m guessing so. I hope so, maybe Bill Perry could shed some light on this.

If the case stands that any .swf bundled with any .exe / active content must adhere to the entire active testing criteria, then I think this will be the final nail in the signed .sis coffin for a great deal of Flash Lite developers. Furthermore, how can developers really commercialise our content with this ‘easy to develop, impossible to deploy’ environment we find ourselves in?

I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Mobile, Symbian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.