The question was posed on Twitter : “How can you add a Splash Screen to an ActionScript only AIR for Android project using FlashBuilder”. Flex mobile projects have the luxury of defining ‘splashScreenImage’, ‘splashScreenMinimumDisplayTime’ & ‘splashScreenScaleMode’ properties within the default application mxml header, pure ActionScript projects do not.
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ActionScript Mobile Project Splash Screen
Auto-update AIR 2.5 to 2.6
Unfortunately the latest release of AIR2.6 in the Flex 4.5 SDK, (bundled with Flash Builder 4.5), has presented a familiar problem trying to auto-update your applications from AIR2.5.
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3650502
We’ve seen this issue before trying to update desktop apps from AIR1.0+ to 2.5 and had to follow a hacky workaround to get users working with the latest version:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/873/cpsid_87300.html
Portfolio: Sohnar . TrafficLIVE
Two years in development, (one for me), “TrafficLIVE” is the latest incarnation of the leading creative studio schedule management “Traffic”. Built completely in Adobe AIR, TrafficLIVE provides a cloud-based studio management and time-keeping solution for creative studios. Featuring permission based views, users can access a variety of top-level tools such as multi-calendar & gantt sheet scheduling designed for Project/Studio managers down to simple personal calendars for studio resources. A key part of my role was re-architecting the original codebase over to the widely known RobotLegs AS3 framework.
Portfolio: Desitouch . Lite Desktop Player
The guys over at Desitouch have released a new lightweight version of their Asian streaming music service.
This latest app runs in radio/discovery mode allowing the user to listen to an assorted track-list matching their selection of artist, track or album. We had the pleasure of working with app-bits on the UI for this version. Go check it out!
Role: Lead Flex/AIR Developer.
Technology: Flash Builder 4.5, Flex4, RobotLegs, AS3Signals, ZendAMF Remoting.
Stack traces in AIR Release Builds
If you’ve ever noticed your AIR app release build acting a bit odd, chances are you’ve caused a fatal error. You could try adding Global Error Handling support to your app to try and catch these uncaught errors, but unfortunately global error handling is pretty useless when trying to identify bugs in your AIR release build. Firsty, it will only catch errors from components on the stage which leaves everything else within your app free to fail silently, (mediators, commands, utility classes etc). Secondly, even if you do catch an error from the stage you’ll only be presented with a nondescript one liner with no access to the stack trace.
Portfolio: Desitouch . Premium Desktop Player
Premium desktop music player built for asian streaming music specialist Desitouch.
Built on the Adobe AIR platform, the Desitouch premium player features Spotify-esque playlist creation, drag & drop functionality, track caching, web syncing, and full album & track searching capabilities.
Making full use of the Adobe AIR API the application allows users to manage their playlists both online and offline with the power of AIR’s local SQLite database and native file support.
Role: Sole Flex/AIR Developer.
Technology: FlexBuilder3, Flash, PureMVC Multicore, Fabrication, ZendAMF Remoting, SQLite.
Portfolio: Staak/Universal . Easter Fun
Easter e-card creation tool built for Leamington Spa based agency Staak. Users are encouraged to upload their image to a custom-coloured cartoon outline and pick some of their favourite characters to star with them in their Easter scene.
Role: Lead Flash Developer.
Technical: FlexBuilder 3, Flash CS4, RobotLegs AS3 Framework, AS3 Signals framework.
Repeating backgrounds in Flex3
Here’s a great way of repeating backgrounds in your Flex containers using Degrafa:
http://bjw.co.nz/developer/flex/83-background-image-repeat-in-flex-3
(If you’re on a mac you’ll probably have issues extracting the Degrafa swc, if you do head here for a solution: http://mattguest.com/archive-utility-annoyance)
AIR SQLite Optimisation
I’ve been working with SQLite quite a bit on my current AIR project and came across this interesting article about how to get the best performance from your AIR app’s SQLite database:
Portfolio: EADS . Where We Operate
Flex based office-locator RIA produced for EADS. A multi-lingual application, making full use of the Google Maps Flash API. Powered by a bespoke XML CMS, new locations and offices can be added and removed with minimal effort.
Role: Lead Flex Developer.
Technical: Flex 3, Flash, FlexUnit, XML, PureMVC Multicore, Fabrication, Google Flash API.
james: thanks Martin, this was a big help...
martmcb: The SWC's are part of the Flex & AIR SDK -> [SDK]/frameworks/libs & [S...
NOT AJ: Were can i get the swc files ?...
Powergeek: The needed SWC's to import have changed in Flash Builder 4.6. For anyo...
MArco: Thanks a lot for this tip you save my day...