Because it makes the development of mobile applications easier and faster. ELIPS Studio allows you to focus on what you do best - create great apps and user experiences - faster than ever!

Adobe Flex is a free and open source collection of technologies for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. ELIPS Studio leverages the momentum around Flex and Flash technologies and associated tools for the development of mobile applications.

For more information, please go to the Flex pages on Adobe's website.

Yes.

If you are a Flex developer, you will feel at home - thanks to ELIPS Studio, your Flex expertise is all you need to be able to develop mobile applications. We take care of the great complexity of mobile phone software! ELIPS Studio integrates to Flex Builder, and reuses AS3/MXML languages.

If you are a Flash developer, ramping up to Flex development will be easy for you.

In terms of code reuse, you will be able to reuse a large variety of assets built with Flex Builder (yours, or libraries from the Flex community).
However, as you can imagine, ELIPS Studio does not expose the complete Flex Framework, especially at GUI level, for 2 very simple reasons:
- it is by far too large and overkill for a mobile device
- it simply does not fit well for mobile application development. For example, no mouse or click, but touch events. In any case, the user interaction on a mobile is very different from the one that you find on a PC.

Yes. ActionScript 3, the language used by Flash / Flex is easy to learn and as powerful as other object-oriented high level languages such as Javascript or Java. Being high level, it allows to produce quickly very compact code. Thanks for example to the E4X extensions, it is very well adapted to developing web 2.0 enabled applications. Flex also provides a way to easily design UI layouts in XML, or with the integrated WYSIWYG layout designer. The associated tools are extremely powerful and easy to use.

In addition, video, sample code, developer forums, documentation, etc. are available on the Internet. See Adobe's Flex Developer Center.

ELIPS Studio is the third main version of Open-Plug’s Mobile SDK. The first one was already available back in 2004.

The previous major versions of ELIPS Studio were focusing on C/C++ development, and have been used by hundreds of developers, their software has been shipped in millions of phones.

ELIPS Studio is an evolution of these market-proven versions. A Beta program was run prior to the comemrcial release in order to guarantee that the commercial version keeps the level of quality and needed features that we reached on the previous major versions.

Details about the ELIPS Studio pricing are available one the ELIPS Studio Pricing page.

Several reasons:

First one is very simple: ELIPS Studio is available now, Flash player on all mobile devices will still take some time to be widely deployed.

Second major reason is performances, both in terms of CPU and memory: Flash player will still be a virtual machine with interpreted code. ELIPS Studio generates optimized native code, and achieves the same performances as if you were developing the application natively in C++. In both cases, you will benefit from HW acceleration.

The third major reason is the iPhone: full Flash player will not be available on iPhone, as Apple is preventing applications based on interpreted code to be published on the App Store. ELIPS Studio generates native code, so no issue there.

The fourth major reason is the integration to native widgets and services: ELIPS Studio, for ex on the iPhone, will map native widgets into Flex applications, and allow to mix them with Flex widgets. This is important especially for the iPhone as Apple is very cautious about UI when it comes to publish apps on the App Store. And iPhone widgets are so well thought, it would be a pity not to use them

Fifth one is the capability to map extra platform specific services.

More generally, OpenPlug's focus is to provide the tools, technologies and performance you need to deliver a great mobile app. We can leverage the great work achieved by Adobe without the constraint they have in term of compatibility, supporting of existing PC oriented content, or legacy tools. As long time experts in Mobile Phone software, we've chosen a path that we believe is the good one: we do not believe that one content fits all platform. But we do believe that your expertise and assets can be reused easily when going from the web or the PC world to the mobile world.

Then it is up to you to make your choice depending what is the most important for you.

Very easy. All you have to do is download it from here. The first time you install ELIPS Studio, a pop-up window will ask you to create an account. And that’s it!

Yes. Feature-wise, the only difference with commercial versions is that an advertisement banner is automatically added in your app. It will pop-up from time to time in your application screen.

You have nothing to do. You will have an advertisement banner popping-up for seven seconds every 1.5 minutes in your application. The Banner Ads are served by a 3rd-party mobile ad aggregator with whom we have an agreement in place.

There is a propertie you can set to place the banner ad at the top of the screen or at the bottom.

Yes. You simply have to get a commercial version. Then the in-app advertisement banner will disappear from your application.

We share the advertisement revenue with you! Basically, you will get paid rather than having to pay anything, ain't that cool?

The ad revenue is shared between you and OpenPlug. You will get 60%. Ad revenue is calculated by our mobile ads partner using industry standard cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM) measures.

Your share of the ad revenue will be paid to you by OpenPlug via a PayPal account on a regular basis, as soon as the accumulated revenue of your app(s) reaches a threshold of 50 Euros.

Yes, if you buy one of the commercial ELIPS Studio licenses. In that case, you are free to integrate any mobile ad library without OpenPlug’s involvement.

Support to Free version users is provided through the Developer Zone Forum by the OpenPlug staff - on a best-effort basis - as well as by other ELIPS Studio Dev Zone members.

The Indie license targets independent developers and provides "a la carte" platform support. With the Indie licence, independent developers pay ONLY for the platforms they want to use and at a discounted price.

This version is restricted to independent developers, and cannot be used by registered companies.

Visit our Online Store and select the Indie license. You will then be able to select your options and place your order.

Once your order is complete, the license will be allocated to your OpenPlug Developer account. Simply log with this account on your installed copy of ELIPS Studio, and the license entitlement will be updated automatically.

Download and Install ELIPS Studio, and simply log in with your OpenPlug Developer account in ELIPS Studio. The license entitlement will be updated automatically, and ELIPS Studio will be activated accordingly. Note that you need to be connected to Internet to activate ELIPS Studio on your computer.

Indie is a special version for independent developers (i.e. non corporate).

ELIPS Studio Indie licenses are per developer and per computer. The license is uniquely assigned to a single person identified by their OpenPlug Developer account username. It is not possible to transfer an Indie License to another user.

Yes. One platform of your choice is included “ads-free” in the base price. Other platforms are then like in the Free version with the built-in banner ads. You can unlock ads-free support for the other platforms "a la carte" by buying additional options.

Please refer to our online store for the prices of license and options.

Sure.

Support to Indie version users is provided through the Developer Zone Forum by the OpenPlug staff - on a best-effort basis - as well as by other ELIPS Studio Dev Zone members.

Go to the "Get ELIPS Studio" page and select the license you want to buy. You will be taken to the online Store. You will then be able to buy as many licenses as needed for your team.
Once your order is complete, the license(s) will be allocated to your OpenPlug Developer account. You can distribute them to other members of your team by going to the "Your Account" -> "Manage Licenses" page.
Once done, you and your team simply need to log in with your account on your installed copy of ELIPS Studio and the license entitlement will be updated automatically.

Note that you need to be connected to Internet to activate ELIPS Studio on your computer.

If you purchased your own license, it is automatically linked to your OpenPlug Developer account. In order to use it, you simply need to login with your OpenPlug Developer account in ELIPS Studio. The license entitlement will be updated automatically, and ELIPS Studio will be activated accordingly.

Note that you need to be connected to Internet to activate ELIPS Studio on your computer.

If your IT (or colleague) purchased a license for you, he/she needs to logon the OpenPlug Developer Zone, and go to the "Your Account" -> "Manage Licenses" page. This will link to a page listing all the licenses he/she purchased. This page allows allocating license(s) to user(s), by entering the OpenPlug Developer account username against the license to be allocated.

Once this is done, the corresponding license is attached to your account. In order to use it, download and install ELIPS Studio, and simply login using your OpenPlug Developer account in ELIPS Studio. The license entitlement will be updated automatically, and ELIPS Studio will be activated accordingly.

Note that you need to be connected to Internet to activate ELIPS Studio on your computer.

Yes.

No. Indie licenses are for individual developers only.

ELIPS Studio Pro/Premium licenses are per developer and per computer. You are allowed to change the computer assignment of your license up to 5 times (e.g. if you upgrade, face a hard disk failure, etc.).

ELIPS Studio Pro/Premium licenses are per developer and per computer. The License is uniquely assigned to a single person identified by their Openplug Developer account username. It is possible to transfer a Pro or Premium license to another user up to 5 times.

After purchasing the licenses, please logon to your OpenPlug Developer account. Go to the Licenses administration page. On this page you can assign the purchased licenses to other user accounts or create new accounts for your team members.

Yes. You are allowed to reassign a license to another user up to 5 times.

Support from OpenPlug’s team to Pro or Premium versions users is provided through OpenPlug’s ticket management interface (a.k.a. "Go Live" assistance service), in addition to the Developer Zone Forum.

The advantage of the "Go Live" assistance service is a guaranteed response time (24 hours max for Premium users, 48 hours max for Professional users). The Developer Zone Forum is a community forum, and support is provided by other users, in addition to OpenPlug staff in best-effort mode.

The “Go Live” assistance service provides Premium users, or other users having purchased assistance tickets, with a direct access to OpenPlug’s experts in order to put your apps in production as quickly as possible. This service package includes application development assistance, direct support and best practices consulting for mobile application development. Our experts are here to help you make your app stunning and its code bullet proof. In addition, this package gives access to pre-release versions and on-demand hot fixes.

"Go Live" assistance is provided through support tickets. To open a ticket, click on the "Support" -> "Tickets" submenu of OpenPlug Developer Zone.

The “Go Live” assistance package includes 10 tickets.

Each ticket corresponds to roughly 0.5 to 1 man-day, worth 30 man-hours of professional expert work.

You can purchase additional assistance tickets.

You will very soon be able to purchase assistance tickets through our store. Meanwhile, please contact us directly.

Assistance tickets price is still under definition, but is likely to be in the ballpark of 300 Euros.

You can purchase assistance tickets. Please contact us.

Yes! Running ELIPS Studio applications on iPhone is supported. You can for instance get our TweetMWC application from iTunes or the App Store.
A tutorial to setup ELIPS Studio for iPhone development is available here. Please check this page for details about OS versions.

Yes! Running ELIPS Studio applications on Android is supported. You can see a video of a ELIPS Studio iPhone application in this blog article.
A tutorial to set up ELIPS Studio for Android application development is available here. Please check this page for details about OS versions.

First, it's important to know that ELIPS Studio will support all the major platforms.

The current release supports iPhone OS (3.0, 3.1, 3.1.2), iOS 4, Windows Mobile (6, 6.1, 6.5), Symbian / Series 60 (3rd and 5th edition), and Android (versions 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2).
Other mobile platforms, such as Samsung's Bada and Nokia/Intel's MeeGo, are under investigation.

See the page Supported platforms for more details.

The reason is simple: your native application contains the runtime.

When compiling the app in SWF, you rely on the Flash player runtime, which is huge, and may or may not be available on the phone, and may or may not be compatible to your SWF file.

When compiling the app in native code (generating the cab, sisx, ipa, etc.), everything is included, the app is self contained and self sufficient. This expains the difference in size.

It is very important to understand that the difference between a very simple application and a more complex application is quite small, because the runtime will be there in both cases. And also that we're working on improving this by removing unused parts, so it's likely to improve overtime.

Applications that are generated for a platform (such as Windows Mobile 6, or Symbian 3rd or 5th edition) will be compatible to any handset running that platform. However, as handset implementation can always vary, for each supported platform, we are testing our product on an extensive list of handsets, and for which an extensive list of device capabilities is available in the variant management part of the product. Thanks to this mechanism, not only your application can run on a specific phone, but you can if you will take advantage of its specificities, and simulate on PC the behavior of your application on that particular mobile phone.

Please login to this developer zone, and download the product for details. Do not hesitate to provide some feedback about missing phones in our forum.

No. ELIPS Studio generates a native, self-contained and self-sufficient standalone application installer, that can be installed on any phone with the corresponding OS. It runs without any pre-installed runtime.

In particular, it does not require a Flash player.

ELIPS Studio Flex SDK is based on version 3.2 of Flex.

It is planned to migrate to version 4 in a later stage.

Yes. ELIPS Studio plug-in works on both Adobe Flex and Flash Builder

Yes and no.

Current version of ELIPS Studio is integrated as a plugin to Flex / Flash Builder.

However, several users have asked us to support Eclipse, with Flex Builder plugin, therefore this is possible now.

About other IDEs: for now, it is not on the roadmap to support other IDEs such as Flash Develop or Powerflasher FDT. We are concentrating on Flex / Flash Builder, which is the most commonly used software for developing Flex applications.

Yes!

There is a Mac OS version of ELIPS Studio that you can get from the Download page.

No. AMF is currently not supported by our mobile Flex framework.
It is an important piece in our roadmap, even though the precise date of availability is not yet defined.

We have implemented an interesting feature allowing you to implement such missing service: the native extension. It allows basically to extend our FWK with new services, and map them to the platform you're targeting.

This feature is available on the iPhone, and Android, and will come in the next future on Symbian and Windows Mobile. A tutorial is available here.

In case you do not wish to develop in the platform language, or need a service on a platform for which native extension is not yet available, please go to the forum, in the board "Influence the roadmap: suggest new features!", and create a topic for the feature you need, if it was not already requested by another user. If it has already been requested, vote for it!

We tend to focus as much as possible on user requests.