Video tutorial: Create native installers in AIR 2
by Serge Jespers on 11. Jun, 2010 in AIR
Package Assistant Pro
by Serge Jespers on 13. May, 2010 in AIR
When you first launch the application, it will ask you to enter the paths to ADT and your code signing certificate. When you have access to the AIR For Android Beta you can also add the AIR 2.5 ADT to package native Android installer packages. AIR For Android is currently in private beta but you can sign up to be notified when it is publicly available. When you have set your preferences, you are ready to go. Just point Package Assistant Pro to your application descriptor XML file and it will read and set all your parameters from it. Package Assistant Pro will also check if you correctly entered your code signing certificate password.
If you don’t mind playing around with beta quality software then check out http://bit.ly/papinfo for the downloads (available for OS X and Windows) and more information. If you run into an issue, have feedback and/or have a feature request, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment on this post.
Package Assistant Pro would not be possible without AIR 2. To learn how to use native processes in AIR 2, check out this article on Adobe Devnet.
E-Seminar: App in a Week – June 7th-10th
by Serge Jespers on 10. May, 2010 in Events
The tools covered will include Flash Builder, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Flex 4 and the Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 runtimes. In my own session we’ll also be covering Device Central and some asset optimization guidelines for targeting mobile phones.
We’ll also look at P2P with Flash Player 10.1 as well as Livecycle, PHP and Java integration on the backend.
Schedule:
June 7th – 12:00 – 13:00 GMT Erase the Designer to Developer gap: Adding interactions to your design with Serge Jespers
June 7th – 15:00 – 16:00 GMT Connecting your design to PHP services with Mihai Corlan
June 8th – 12:00 – 13:00 GMT Connecting a web application to a J2EE backend using Flash Builder 4 with Michael Chaize
June 8th – 15:00 – 16:00 GMT Working with Flash CS5 components in your Flash Builder 4 project with Mike Jones
June 9th – 12:00 – 13:00 GMT Going multi-user with P2P in Flash Player 10.1 with Tom Krcha
June 9th – 15:00 – 16:00 GMT Developing multi-user applications with LiveCycle services with Tom Krcha
June 10th – 12:00 – 13:00 GMT Bringing web Applications to the desktop with AIR 2.0 with Piotr Walczyscyn
Jun 10th – 15:00 – 16:00 GMT Code once and run on multiple mobile devices with Mark Doherty
We’ve been busy for the past week building “EVA” to demonstrate all of the above. I think you’ll be really impressed with it and of course we’ll be providing the code after for you to use in your own applications.
SIGN UP HERE
Video tutorial: Using the new states model in Flex 4
by Serge Jespers on 22. Apr, 2010 in Flex, How-to, Video
Also available on Adobe TV.
The HTML5 Flash Marriage: Geolocation source
by Serge Jespers on 08. Mar, 2010 in Flash Player, html5
A few people have also noted that the demo doesn’t work across different platforms even when using the same browser. While I wanted to demonstrate how Flash and HTML5 can coexist and even complement each other, it is (sadly) also a demonstration on how HTML5 is being implemented differently across browsers and operating systems. Feel free to post a comment if you know about fixes or workarounds in the JavaScript to make it work on more browsers.
The HTML5 Flash Marriage: Geolocation
by Serge Jespers on 05. Mar, 2010 in Flash Player, html5
Geolocation is a good example. HTML5 is going to get a geolocation API that works just beautifully even on devices with no GPS. Flash based applications will (currently) only get access to geolocation APIs when targeting the AIR runtime on mobile. Some browsers (I only know of Firefox 3.5 on Mac and the WebKit browser on the Nexus One) already support the HTML5 geolocation API… So why not use that to get geo information into your Flash based application?
It’s actually extremely easy to do…
But first a little bit of background as to why I was looking for this functionality. I’m actually building “this demo app” that needs the geolocation in order to have the functionality I was looking for. I want this app to work in as many places as possible. With the Flash Platform I can build this for my browser and my desktop. For the Apple phone I can export it as a native app and for the Nexus One I can use the device browser with Flash Player 10.1.
Now… How does it work? The HTML5 geolocation API is extremely easy to use and, like I said earlier, you don’t even need to have a GPS enabled device.
function getGEO()
{
// First check if your browser supports the geolocation API
if (navigator.geolocation)
{
alert("HTML 5 is getting your location");
// Get the current position
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position)
{
lat = position.coords.latitude
long = position.coords.longitude;
// Pass the coordinates to Flash
passGEOToSWF(lat, long);
});
} else {
alert("Sorry... your browser does not support the HTML5 GeoLocation API");
}
}
function passGEOToSWF(lat,long)
{
alert("HTML 5 is sending your location to Flash");
// Pass the coordinates to mySWF using ExternalInterface
document.getElementById("mySWF").passGEOToSWF(lat,long);
}
In my Flash application, I’m using ExternalInterface so I can communicate between JavaScript and my SWF. When my Google Maps component is ready, I call the GetGEO JavaScript method:
ExternalInterface.call("getGEO");
When the JavaScript method gets a result from the geolocation API, it will pass it on to the passGEOToSWF method. In my Flash application, I just listen for that method call and then call the code to update the map.
ExternalInterface.addCallback("passGEOToSWF", onPassGEOToSWF);
If you don’t have an HTML5 ready browser, check out this video of the application running in Firefox 3.6. Even cooler is that this also works in the browser on my Flash Player 10.1 enabled Nexus One (Please note that the network is slower on the N1 and thus it isn’t able to keep up with loading new map images. This has nothing to do with Flash Player 10.1 or the application.):
If you have Firefox 3.5 or newer installed, you can give it a try yourself: http://www.webkitchen.be/geolocation. I’m sure there are other browsers out there that also already have the geolocation API but this is the only one I tested on the Mac.
Hopefully this gives you a good idea of how HTML5 and Flash can also just work together (instead of killing each other ;-)). Flash on!
UPDATE: While writing this blog post, @robertbak pinged me on Twitter saying that he wrote a library to use in your Flex applications. Check it out on the Flex Exchange.
UPDATE: For the source files check out this blogpost.
Video tutorial: “Elf Yourself” yourself – Personalized video on the web
by Serge Jespers on 13. Nov, 2009 in How-to, Video Tutorial
Note: Please update your After Effects CS4 installation to make sure you have the latest version available via the Adobe Updater. There is an issue with the preinstalled After Effects script that requires you to work with the latest point release (separate downloads available for Mac OS and Windows).
Ever wondered how you can create personalized video on the web? Want to create your own ElfYourself.com? This tutorial shows you how it’s done using After Effects CS4 and Flash Professional CS4. Ooh.. before I forget… One of my evangelist colleagues has a cameo appearance at the end of the tutorial ;-)
Fiat eco:Drive AIR application wins MediaGuardian award
by Serge Jespers on 26. Mar, 2009 in AIR, News
The Fiat eco:Drive application built by AKQA won a MediaGuardian award this week in the “DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY” category. eco:Drive is an innovative application built on AIR that aims to improve your driving skills. It analyzes your driving style and helps increase your fuel efficiency, saving you money and minimizing your CO2 emissions.
Andrew and I recorded a video about eco:Drive a few months ago. If you haven’t seen it and would like to find out more about why and how eco:Drive was built, check out the video here.
Congrats to Rick, Adam and Harald at AKQA and Claudio at Fiat.
SEO for Flash works
by Serge Jespers on 18. Mar, 2009 in Flash
SEO for Flash based sites and/or applications has always been a hot topic. Depending on the source you’ll very hear different opinions. That’s exactly why Belgian based agency Nascom did their own test a few weeks back. They came to the conclusion that Google can index Flash. You can read more about their test and their findings on their blog.
If you want to find out more about SEO for Flash, you should also check out our recently launched SEO Technology Center. While Adobe and the leading search engines are making significant strides in making SWF content more searchable, you can take additional steps now to improve your search ranking positions further.
The SEO Technology Center helps explain what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.
Video tutorial: Use Flex for your ActionScript coding for Flash CS4
by Serge Jespers on 09. Mar, 2009 in Flash, Flex, How-to, Video, Video Tutorial
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