X vs. O; Seminar Source
I just wrapped up my seminar for Adobe Developer Week 2008. While there was no cat killing bunny rabbit this time around, I did create a number of small exciting demo applications for Flash developers to start to get their hands dirty with Adobe AIR.
For those of you that did attend, I hope you enjoyed it and that you see that it takes very little effort to get started with AIR. And that AIR is very powerful. And can be very fun.
As soon as I have a link to the recording of the seminar I’ll supply it.
UPDATE
You can see the recording of the session here. Registration may be required. Sorry about the poor audio in the beginning…
Source
X vs. O (right click and Save As).
Powerpoint Slideshow
I’m going to use this post as a venue for answering a lot of the questions I was asked regarding AIR. Read on for answers to some of the common questions I was asked.
Most of the answers to these questions can be found on Adobe’s Developer Center and FAQ, but I want to make sure I cover some of the important stuff I glossed over in the session.
What are digital signatures, do I need them and how do I get one?
I got an email regarding the Digital Signature part of the AIR Application & Install Settings panel. I skipped over this step in the seminar. In order to build an AIR application you need a Digital Signature. This signature represents the publisher’s identity (you). These signatures are basically insurance for the user’s OS that the application they’re about to install is trusted. The bad news is that this verification costs money… I don’t know the cost.
This is more eloquently explained here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/signing_air_applications_02.html
So can you build an AIR app without one of these signatures? Yes. And it’s free. All that user will be told that there is no signature so the OS can’t vouch for the content of the application. They have to hit “Yes” one more time before installation of the application begins… not the end of the world. X vs. O (and all of my AIR applications) are built this way.
To do this, Click “Change…” next to the Digital Signature option to the right of Install Settings in the AIR Application & Installer Settings panel. A new “Digital signature” window will appear. Hit “Create…” and just fill the data out with fake data. I typically put in Big Spaceship for everything and “abc123″ as my password. Then save it (you simply choose the directory to save it in) and hit okay. Put your password into the window, check “Remember password for this session” and hit okay. Now instead of an AIRI you’ll get a .air.
Can you provide the source code for the basic examples you showed, including Drag & Drop from the browser?
Yep, already have. The source code link above includes all of those demos plus X vs. O.
What is the security model for Adobe AIR?
Adobe provides all the answers in this whitepaper.
Can AIR load [insert filetype here]?
The short answer: Yes.
The long answer: ActionScript 3’s ByteArray class lets a developer read and interpret bytes any way they want to. If you want to write a custom Commodore 64 emulator that loads in ROMs, go right ahead… but you’re on your own for how to read and interpret those bytes.
AIR’s FileStream will let you read and write bytearrays. For simple strings you can use a FileStream to read/write UTF bytes. This is how one would load and reads XML or text files from the local filesystem.
Loading JPGs, SWFs, FLVs and all the other media you know and love with ‘regular’ Flash SWFs is exactly the same.
If a flash app has a parent SWF with multiple child SWFs, does only the parent have to be an AIR app or do all the child SWFs have to be converted to AIR apps, too?
Actually, nothing gets “converted”… your main swf remains a SWF. It’s simply the initial SWF loaded into your air application.
You can load normal old SWFs into your AIR application. Our Environment class (which comes w/ X vs. O source) contains an IS_IN_BROWSER statement that returns true if the application is currently running as an AIR app… useful when one is building just such a framework.
March 25th, 2008 by Jamie / 4 Commentsspeaking, adobe, air, source
