Devices at MAX 2011

Later this week Adobe MAX 2011 will be officially opened. Last week I blogged about some of the sessions and labs that will be focusing on mobile development. This week I wanted to highlight some sessions that are built around specific devices.

Adobe AIR and TVs (Samsung and LG)

Televisions are getting smarter and smarter. This means that you (individual developer or company/agency) have a great opportunity to build the killer apps people will want to buy or use on their latest generation TVs. If you want to find out more about what you can do and how, bookmark these sessions:

Sony Android Tablets

Sony announced this summer two Android based tablets that will be shipped later on this year. This was a surprise for many as this marks the first time that Sony has built a tablet that uses Android. At MAX you can attend these two sessions:

BlackBerry PlayBook

To date, the PlayBook is one of my favorite tablets that money can buy. And one of the things that make this tablet special is that you have multiple ways to create your application, from HTML to ActionScript/Flex. Here are some related sessions:

NOOK Color

NOOk Color from Barnes & Noble is one of the hot devices on the market – the content, distribution, Android OS, and demographics all make this device special. Well, if you live here in Europe not so much :D. At MAX you can learn more about this ecosystem:

Motorola

If you ever developed a mobile application you know that building the app is just one of a long list of the check points you have to complete. And arguably it is the easiest to check too (thanks to Adobe AIR, Flex, and Flash Builder I’d say). One question I heard at many mobile events is related to application discoverability. At MAX you can learn about making your app more visible in Android Market and on Motorola smartphones and tablets:

September 27, 2011 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment 

Native Extensions examples available now

Among of the biggest news of the Adobe AIR 3 release  is the Native Extensions feature. If you want to get started with this, or maybe just try it, you should check out the Native Extensions page on Adobe Developer Connection.

There are five examples so far:

  1. Gyroscope (iOS/Android)
  2. NetworkInfo (iOS) – retrieves information about the network interfaces on an iOS device
  3. Vibration (iOS/Android) – make the device vibrate
  4. iBattery (iOS) – gets the battery status (unknown, unplugged, charging, or full) of an iOS device
  5. .NET Image Encoder (Windows) – encodes a bitmap into BMP, JPEG, or PNG format using Microsoft .NET Framework 4

The first three extensions were created by Adobe engineers, the last two by community. As I said before I’m looking forward to seeing many more extensions created and having a central place to go for all of them.

September 22, 2011 | Filed Under AIR, Mobile | 1 Comment 

Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 to be released in early October

Today Adobe announced that the next version of our runtimes, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, will be released in early October. This is great news for all developers who rely on the Flash Platform for building desktop and mobile applications.

Just a reminder about some of the coolest new features coming with these releases:

Gaming

If you’ve ever played games like Machinarium or Tanki Online you know that Flash Player is one of the best options out there for developers and companies who want to build online games. To help you getting the most out of the Flash Platform we created a gaming center: Adobe Gaming Solutions.

We are also announcing the Starling framework: a lightweight framework for 2D graphics and animation that combines the simplicity of Flash with the power of the Stage 3D API. It is an open source ActionScript library. Watch this particle effect with Starling and Flash Player 11:

Adobe will also soon make a 3D framework technology preview called Proscenium. This will allow developers using Flash Builder to rapidly prototype apps focused on simple content interaction and display, whether for simple games, visualization, or high-quality rendering of small object collections.

Mobile Apps Support

The Native Extensions feature is aimed at mobile developers. I believe that this feature was the “missing link” that stopped some people who otherwise would have chosen the Flash Platform.

Indeed being able to write native code to expose native hardware and OS features and APIs means that you can basically extend the AIR runtime from now on. So, instead of asking Adobe for support for notifications or the contact list API you can create or buy/reuse a native extension that does this.

I know many people are already working on a number of native extensions many of them taking care of some of the most popular developer requests. I hope we will have some kind of a market so people who want to build native extensions and those who want to consume them will be able to meet.

Finally, the Stage 3D API will come to mobile devices too. So this means it will be possible run even more incredible content on these devices.

What about Flex and Flash Builder

With the new version of the runtimes almost out it is only natural to ask this question: what about Flex and Flash Builder? Well, don’t worry because Flex 4.6 and Flash Builder 4.6 are coming this year too (and if you are a Flash Builder 4.5 customer you’ll get this version for free).

Flex 4.6 extends the mobile support introduced by Flex 4.5 by adding new components and better performance. Here are some of them:

SplitViewNavigator

CallOutButton

SpinnerList

DateSpinner

Toggle Switch

The other big news is the improved support for text input across devices. Flex will be using the native text input control on every platform. What does this mean for developers? It means you can customize the keyboard (having access to all supported keyboards; e.g. numeric keyboard or email keboard) and you have access to features like spell checking or cut/copy/paste.

In terms of performance, simply repackaging with Flash Builder and Flex 4.6 can boost your application performance up to 50%.

These releases will provide support for the latest operating systems like iOS 5 and the upcoming Android OS.

Also Flash Builder 4.6 will have support for monitoring network traffic and unit testing for mobile projects.

Download

You can download the release candidates from Adobe Labs.

If you do the math, you’ll see that it has been almost three months from the previous updates of the runtimes, Flex, and Flash Builder. This is not much time, and yet the teams were able to add lots of new features. So I think they deserve a big round of applause! Well done guys!

September 21, 2011 | Filed Under Others | 4 Comments 

Adobe MAX 2011

Adobe MAX 2011 is just around the corner. Every year I feel the same: how fast the last year has passed! I guess I have a better feeling of how the time is passing by counting the MAXs :D

Anyway let’s get back to the event itself. There are many reasons for wanting to attend Adobe MAX (learning new products and technologies, staying in touch with the latest and greatest, and networking just to name few) but if you plan to start mobile development or to learn new tricks then here is a list I put together.

Beginner

Intermediate / Advanced

I want to call out these sessions:

My team has been working lately on a number of mobile applications so we have lots of experience earned first-hand. I encourage you to attend Renaun’s, Ryan’s, and Paul’s sessions.

See you there and don’t forget you’ll be able to watch the keynotes online if you don’t plan to attend the event in person. Let’s rock the house once again!

September 19, 2011 | Filed Under Conferences | 1 Comment 

About Flash Mobile Versatility

The Flash Platform as a compelling mobile solution across devices is enjoying an excellent momentum. I’m getting and seeing more and more Flash powered mobile apps. While this is interesting and cool this not what I want to focus on in this post.

Most people think about the Flash Platform for mobile as something that enables developers to build mobile apps for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS. What it is not so evident is it’s versatility: you can build almost whatever you want. And when I say this I mean it. You can build sophisticated games (and soon you will be able to build cool 3D games thanks to Stage3D), you can build beautiful apps for enterprise or consumer brands, you can build high performance apps for consumers, and the list can go on and on.

The last big thing that was a show stopper for some projects is about to be removed by the Native Extensions feature. This feature (it will be available in the soon-to-be-released next version of Adobe AIR) will enable developers to extend the runtime and achieve deeper integration with the device by accessing device/OS capabilities or other applications.

Let me give you just one example. Three applications that are quite different in what needs they solve while working and looking just great.

Cassandra Stand is a companion application for Android, iOS, and PlayBook devices. It picks  your location automatically and displays time/date, temperature, and news. While this app is a simple one it works and looks great. Congratulations to Leonardo Risuleo and the team.

Web Reader is probably one of the best PlayBook apps for those who use RSS readers. It is fast and intuitive and it works great with Google Reader. I’d love to see these guys writing an article about how they built their app. As with the previous two apps I installed the app on my tablet and played with it. My RSS list is pretty big and I was curious about how they will display all the categories and how easy would be to navigate between the various items. All I can say is that they did a good job :)

Hungry Cho-Cho is a funny little game for iOS. Tomer Reiss of KWAZI shown me this app during my visit to Israel earlier this year. It worked just great on my iPod Touch (at that time they were using AIR 2.5; I’m curious how it would feel with AIR 2.7 as this release brought more speed and performance especially for iOS devices). They released their application and he wrote a blog post about some of the things he learned while developing the game.

If you created some cool mobile apps using the Flash Platform, you know how you can get in touch with me. I’m out!

September 19, 2011 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment 

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