Signing AIR applications

Posted by on Jun 16, 2008 in How-to, onAIR Tour | Comments Off

My presentation at the On AIR tour through Europe was about signing, deploying and updating your AIR applications. If you didn’t make it to the tour or just want to read up on these topics, I wrote three separate posts about them on the train somewhere between Prague and Munich.

First of all, why is signing an application important? Easy. When your application is unsigned or signed with a self-signed certificate, the user will get two red icons on the install screen. The first one is related to your code signing certificate. It’s telling you that the “publisher is unknown” which is very normal since we have no idea who actually signed this application.

When you do get a code signing certificate and sign the application with it, the icon will turn green or in some cases yellow. The yellow icon will appear when you are using the file I/O API.

Get a complimentary code signing certificate

Posted by on May 20, 2008 in AIR | 6 comments

If you’ve already published an AIR application, chances are you did that by using a self signed code certificate. When you installed the app, the AIR installer told you that the publisher’s identity is unknown.

If you get a code signing certificate from a company like Thawte.com and use that to sign your application, it’s obvious that your identity has been verified. The AIR installer will show that your identity is known.

If you upload your application to the Adobe AIR Marketplace now, you are eligible to receive one Thawte code signing certificate (1 year Class 3 code signing certificate) from Adobe. As this is purely available on a first-come, first-served basis and supplies are limited, you might not want to wait too long to upload your app.

Read details here and then go upload your app on the Adobe AIR Marketplace.