Building A Mobile App Using Flash Builder 4.5
Adobe has recently launched Flash Builder 4.5. This release permits builders to construct “Mobile Apps” for some cell device systems and to develop internet applications and laptop packages using MXML and Actionscript Three.
This launch seems squarely focused on dealing with Steve Jobs’s and others’ latest comments and the ensuing debate over whether Flash is useless, given the abilities of HTML 5 and other technological trends.
Since this is a primary release for Adobe and a critical new capability for us Flex builders, we think the technique of developing a smallish App and enabling it on some of the devices will be. The concept of being capable of increasing mobile apps for a wide range of cell devices using an unmarried code base is truly attractive.
Overall, Adobe’s developer experience with Flash Builder 4. Five is quite brilliant, even though there are one or two pretty essential omissions. Given the variations in Operating System, screen length, display resolution, and handset functionality, deploying a Mobile App for various gadgets is a frightening project. Whilst it would not resolve all troubles, Flash Builder four. Five is certainly a super beginning.
Target Market
Flash Builder 4. Five would not target every market cell tool. Its objectives include cell gadgets strolling Android 2.2 and upwards, iOS (iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, and iPad), and QNX (Blackberry Playbook Tablet). These are essentially the excessive capabilities of modern Operating Systems for Smartphones and Tablet PCs. That covers around 50% of the present cellular tool hooked up to the base and possibly a miles higher percentage of new mobile device income. Symbian, Blackberry Smartphones, and Windows Mobile 7 are crucial omissions to the goal platforms available.
Development Environment and Experience
Overall, Flash Builder 4.5 increases Mobile Apps and is widely used to develop laptop applications for Adobe Air or web programs inside the Flash Player. The Flash Builder development environment is properly included with the rest of Adobe’s services, including active Suite Five. Five and Flash Catalyst, so you can easily increase your ongoings in those applications and import them into Flash Builder. Developers use MXML and Actionscript to broaden the App, but there may be an extra constrained range of personal controls. Importantly, there’s the same connectivity to record offerings using Web Services, AMF, HTTP, and comparable.
The first difference you note when developing mobile apps is that rather than an application tag used for growing air and net packages, you’ve got a ViewNavigatorApplication tag. With the Application tag, you normally region navigation manage and then place infant components (effectively the different perspectives) within the navigator control. This allows builders to recognize what additives are being used irrespective of how deep they’re buried in the reporting hierarchy. With ViewNavigator, however, whilst you navigate to an exclusive View, you “pop” a specific View onto the display screen via name. You can pop different perspectives later in reaction to occasions and personnel moves. However, you need to return to the home display via the identical view order in the opposite.
With the Application tag, you can configure the utility to skip any required statistics from the kid additives’ primary utility because you are privy to what components constitute your infant screens. Since houses are generally strongly typed, Flash Builder will give build-time errors if you are trying to get entry to or pass a property that doesn’t exist. With Mobile Apps and the ViewNavigator tag, the compiler would not see alternative Views that are part of the software until runtime; accordingly, the developer loses an important level of mistake checking before runtime. Also, Views only have unmarried “Data” assets. The Data property may be any object so that you can skip a group of all the records you require, but build time error checking is misplaced on whether homes inside the statistics being handed certainly exist.
No Drop Down List
There isn’t always a drop-down listing in Flash Builder Mobile. No, there definitely is not. To me, this seems the biggest oversight, and I expect they’ll fix it in Flash Builder 5 or with any luck before that. However, for now, the workaround is to have a button that seems like a drop-down listing (has pores and skin with a drop-down listing icon) and then. At the same time, the user clicks the button to pop up an aspect-based totally across the “SkinnablePopUpContainer” with a list of your gadgets inside it. So you can grow to be with something that appears to the person like a drop-down list but is absolutely a button that calls pop up with a listing of objects.
No MX Components Except Charts
No MX components will work except charts. The MX namespace isn’t to be used in mobile apps. Hence, most MX components are unavailable in the IntelliSense editor’s drop-down. Some Spark components (e.g., the drop-down list) are “Not Mobile Optimized,” which is Adobe’s manner of announcing they might not work. In popular, however, there are enough controls to create your desired display.
From its appearance, it can come up with something that will look precise on each display; it seems like a mission is impossible. However, Flash Builder comes with integrated features that assist drastically. Firstly, you can say what display density you are targeting, and then, while the App masses if the tool has a specific screen density, the App will cut back and amplify buttons and other components as required. Flash Builder categorizes every device as having considered one of 3 display densities: one hundred sixty, 240, or 320 dpi.
Bitmap pictures shrink and grow poorly, so the above technique is inappropriate. To manage this, Adobe has furnished the “MultiDpiBitmapSource.” This is wherein you use a bitmap because of the icon for a button; you could offer three extraordinary variations of the equal bitmap to the button, every sized to target display density one hundred sixty, 240, or 320. Flash Builder will then locate what the device is and use the appropriate bitmap as the icon. Finally, you could also add different settings to your CSS document, allowing you to trade settings for distinctive display densities and a special Operating System.
The result is that you may code as soon as possible. Then, after spending a little effort making sure it seems as good as possible in diverse situations, it will appear pretty suitable for most devices. If you are focused on the whole spectrum of gadgets, you may need to have a few forms of change-off of time spent on styling versus the payback for every tool. Some studies into the target market size for every device and then prioritization will allow you to make suitable decisions on what the principal device needs to be and how much time must be spent styling for the opposite gadgets.
Testing the App in Flash Builder
Flash Builder comes with an awesome technique for seeing what your screen will look like on distinct gadgets. Firstly, at layout time, you can pick from a drop-down list of gadgets and notice the results. By choosing extraordinary run configurations by Operating System and device, you can run the utility and see the outcomes on each device.
