Embedded Linux application with Flash GUI?
 

I'm working on an embedded linux app. that is predominantly coded in C. I would like to have a reskinable GUI interfacing to the app. and am considering using Flash to develop it, with the current app. (multiple threads) as a C-library. At the moment I'm guessing this would involve some ActionScript invoking some Javascript, which then interfaces with my main C app. running as a library, with parameters passing backwards and forwards between the various layers as necessary. Correct?

I have only just started looking into using Flash, so my question is - Does this sound feasible, or practical? Any gotchas I should be aware of?

Any references/pointers to sample implementations/toolkits will be gratefully received.

I think that Flash might be too resource-intensive for an embedded device, and it's only avaible for i386 and amd64 (alpha state).

I've heard about QTopia, a Qt extension for embedded systems, but I never use it

I have seen people using flash for this. The advantages are that the resulting gui is multi-platform and runs in a web browser. The disadvantages are that it runs in a web browser (that is both a plus and a minus), AND it sucks a LOT of system resources.

I am doing the same thing you are doing, but I chose to write my gui in C++ using Glade and gtk. This solution is multi-platform (though it needs to be compiled for each platform) and has a much smaller footprint on both systems. I was able to implement an adequate security model this way without any particular circumlocutions, and I am not using the web, which I consider to be a good thing when controlling remote devices.

In the not-distant past, I implemented a GUI to an embedded system using C# in Windows because of a customer requirement. I found C# to be tedious to use, mostly because I consider VS to be a royal PITA to use. However, as bloated as the result was, it still consumed a lot less of the client system than a flash implementation would have consumed.

Thanks for the feedback.
Apart from Adobe flash player has anyone got experience of other flash players that are more suitable for an embedded environment? i.e. ones that are less resource intensive and interface more easily to embedded application code/libraries, etc. Any recommendations/ones to avoid?

Amm I am not sure but I have found people saying that Java FX is going to be dominant for GUI and animation because it supports wide range from tiny Embedded system to Graphic work stations.....

I would bet against this. The reason is that java requires the overhead of a virtual machine. This takes memory and drive space, which are usually at a premium in embedded systems. A native app, written in C, will always take less space.

Java as a language/platform for a remote GUI is a different matter, though. That would work adequately - probably a lot better than flash.