digital artist
If you’re thinking about getting started with AIR for Android, why not join us at our dotBrighton meeting on Wednesday? David Arno will be telling us all how to get started.
Bad news! There aren’t any real-life tickets left! Good news! You can go get yourself a ticket for the live stream.
And if you’re interested in Android, why not come to the DroidCon in London this week? I’ll be speaking on Friday morning about AIR.
I’ve been working hard on my upcoming talk at Flash on the Beach over the last few weeks, it’s actually one of the most difficult talks I’ve ever given. Trying to unravel all the trials and tribulations in our industry to come up with a some reasonable and helpful conclusions is surprisingly difficult!
As you may know, I’ve been learning and learning and learning. Unity3D, HTML5, JavaScript, iOS, and on the Flash side, AIR Android, multi-user technology, mic input and more.
This is because I love learning, but as a side effect, it really helps me to appreciate the benefits and disadvantages of one platform over another. This has been invaluable when it comes to understanding where Flash fits into the technology landscape.
In the Flash community we have a tendency to be insular, especially when our beloved technology gets such a bad rap in the press. But why is that? In order to find out what Flash looks like from the outside, I interviewed (on camera) 3 open web experts, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and Remy Sharp. If you’ve even got half an eye on the web community at large you may have heard of these people!
They were extremely honest and frank on their thoughts on Flash and its relevance in today’s web. Trust me, you need to hear what they’re saying.
But it wouldn’t be very balanced research unless I spoke to respected members of the Flash community. I also interviewed Jer Thorp, Brendan Dawes and Branden Hall about the changes in Flash over the last few years, and how the emerging new tech has affected their work.
But that’s not all! I want to hear what you think too! Please fill in my questionnaire if you want your own opinions to be added to the mix. [UPDATE : Survey now closed with over 300 respondents – thank you!]
I’ll be presenting these video interviews, alongside some key web articles and tweets, and adding a sprinkling of my own thoughts at my Flash on the Beach session. It’s certainly been an eye-opening year for me, and I hope you’ll find it as interesting as I have.
At first, it seemed like no matter what I did I’d just get the Enter IP Address or Hostname requester in my AIR app. So, to get rid of this dreaded requester once and for all follow my handy debugging AIR Android checklist!
If you’re new to Air for Android I’d recommend checking Lee Brimelow’s getting started tutorials here and here, and a couple of extra tips here on my AIR Android getting started report.
It is currently a little fiddly to get debugging, but as Air for Android is still in beta, this will hopefully become more seamless in future. But in the current build, here’s a list of things to check:
<android> <manifestAdditions> <manifest> <data><![CDATA[ <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> ]]></data> </manifest> </manifestAdditions> </android> |
Make sure you add this to the top of the XML, not the bottom! I put it between the <copyright> and the <initialWindow> definitions:
...
<copyright></copyright>
<android>
<manifestAdditions>
<manifest>
<data><![CDATA[ <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> ]]></data>
</manifest>
</manifestAdditions>
</android>
<initialWindow>
<content>MyApp.swf</content>
... |
If you put it under the <initialWindow> definitions, the AIR Android extension seems to wipe it! It took me a while to work this one out, I expect they’ll fix it in the final build. I’ve also suggested that they set this permission by default if you’re publishing a debug build, it’d kinda make sense to me. 🙂
You may still get the Enter IP Address or Hostname dialogue box but I must admit I only ever saw this if I didn’t set up the other options correctly. But if you do see it try typing the local IP address of your computer first, then the global one.
So! There you have it. Let me know how you get along and if there’s anything I missed.
Having finished my first iPhone app in Objective C I thought it was probably time to have a go at setting up my Nexus1 with AIR for Android. Yes. I’m a digital slut. And no. I’m not gonna pick a side. Deal with it. 🙂
But anyway, I digress! I found Lee’s very cool intro to Android videos which have been a big help. But I did get a warning from Stephan Jones on Twitter who tells me that there is a virus on the site, so possibly make sure you’re running virus software first! UPDATE : Lee and Serge both assure me there’s nothing wrong with their sites so I can only assume Stephan’s virus checker was being a little overzealous!
A few things caught me out, if you navigate to the tools folder in terminal you can’t just type adb devices as the permissions on the files didn’t seem to be set right. the easy workaround is to type ./adb devices or else change the permissions with chmod if you like that sort of thing.
But the biggest thing was that it just wasn’t recognising my phone. I’m not sure if Lee mentioned it or not (maybe I wasn’t paying attention) but you need to turn on USB debugging on the phone itself. Go to Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging. That’ll do it!
Also the link for AIR for Android wasn’t on the front page of Adobe Labs and it was surprisingly difficult to find it. But it’s here : http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/
And finally I couldn’t actually get my app to deploy from Flash CS5 – the reason? I hadn’t turned USB Storage on – doh!
And it’s working! Lunar Lander on Android, anyone? 😉