Earlier this week I finally found the time to get my hands on Adobe's new tools to enable AIR development for mobile, specifically the Android platform. I have to be a bit vague about the details as things are still under NDA but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts, and the actual results of my first Android application.
As I said - I have to be a bit vague. As soon as I can show you the tools I used, I will. But let me just say this. The only way mobile development could be easier is if Adobe sent an engineer to my office and wrote the code for me. This is game changing. I've given Adobe a hard time in the past for their MAX keynotes where they constantly, and regularly, state that "Mobile is really big now!" and "Next year mobile will be everywhere." I'm sure many of my readers have attended MAX and have heard the same. Frankly, I laughed at it. But guess what? I'm a fracking believer now. Hard core. When Adobe releases these tools to the public I honestly think we're going to see a whole heck of a lot more mobile development from people in our community. I am not ashamed to say it - I was giddy. The application you will see below is the result of 2 or so hours work. Of those 2 hours, I'd say a good 90% of it was due to me being a bit unfamiliar with Flex 4. Shoot - I had to look up how to do validators again. If you are familiar with Flex 4 already then you are going to be developing mobile applications incredibly fast.
When I can, I'll post the full code to the application, and talk about the experience of building it, but for now, anyone with an Android compatible phone should be able to download the APK below (unzip it) and give it a whirl. The application is a port of an old web site I built. I won't tell you the details, but it should be perfect for the Halloween season. For those of you with "subpar" phones, you can check out the screen shots below.
Shot 1:
Shot 2:
Archived Comments
I thought I'd just download the apk via my phone, but I found that the mobile version of your site doesn't show the download link. I can access it just fine via the desktop version, but I'd be nice in this case if I didn't have to switch to the full version.
Scratch that, the link on your mobile version will not take me to the full site. It just reloads the mobile version.
@Josh: Yep, known issue - will be adding it to 5.9.8.
@Josh: Odd - the link should include a URL variable that my site picks up... crap. So the core BlogCFC handles this - I forgot to update it here. I'll do right now. What will happen then is - when you click the link, a session var will keep you off of mobile.
Thanks Josh, fixed. As I said, the 'show download link in mobile' won't be fixed till the next rev of BlogCFC. As it stands, I have it as a zip here (cuz I didn't update IIS), so I'm not sure if Droid would let you unzip and then install.
I refreshed and the desktop version came up, but I didn't click the link. Maybe the session variable was already set?
Yep, it was set, but I forgot the mod to - you know - actually check for it.
Cool - so hopefully now you will comment about the app itself? :)
I haven't been able to get this to run. I have an AT&T phone, and they've disabled sideloading, so I have to go alternate routes to get non-market apps on my phone. The program I'm using gives me an error when installing saying " install failed, older SDK". I'm guessing whatever version of the SDK Adobe's product uses isn't compatible with the tool I'm using.
Sorry Josh - no idea on that one.