RefreshingApps.com - News http://refreshingapps.com/news The finest selection of Adobe AIR applications, tutorials and resources for your viewing pleasure. Visit the site for more. en freshairapps@gmail.com Copyright 2010 2010-01-06T08:50:24+00:00 National Geographic AIR app from EffectiveUI http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/national_geographic_air_app_from_effectiveui/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/national_geographic_air_app_from_effectiveui/#When:08:50:24Z Very nice looking CD based AIR application from EffectiveUI covering all of the back issues within an interactive app.

The set can be purchased from National Geographic direct for a current price of $69.99USD, more details from the National Geographic site here.

More details can be found here on EffectiveUI and a writeup by Adobe on the AIR blog here.

Posted in: Business, Design, Releases

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Business, Design, Releases 2010-01-06T08:50:24+00:00 Build for the iPhone with Flash & AIR! http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/build_for_the_iphone_with_flash_air/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/build_for_the_iphone_with_flash_air/#When:20:34:40Z BIG news this from the Adobe MAX keynote in LA. In the forthcoming version of Flash (CS5) you will be able to create applications that compile down to actual real iPhone applications and are deployed using an Adobe AIR type runtime.

Just imagine this the world of iPhone development opened up to all of the great Flash & AIR designers and developers creating great experiences for this device. What excited me even more is that we can take our existing skills and create apps for so many devices and the probability of even more devces and mobiles in the future.

Catch up with the latest on the iPhone Flash development from the Adobe labs site here.

Just to be clear these are real actual iPhone apps that you can submit to the Apple App store and have approved. Adobe have really done themselves proud, let’s hope that the actual experience lives up to the hype.

I’m sure this will be tying in with Adobe’s Try and Buy technology that will work with Adobe AIR so that you can add trial and purchasing technology to your own Adobe AIR apps.

So this also means that you no longer need a Mac to create iPhone apps, that’s a whole market right there.

Latest news:

Is that you can deploy to Adobe AIR and iPhone at the same time.
You can’t currently use PixelBender, AS1 / 2, loadSWF’s or use HTMLLoader

Example apps:

From Adobe’s Ted Patrick 4 Flash iPhone apps source included! – :http://onflash.org/ted/2009/10/source-to-4-flash-iphone-apps.php”:http://onflash.org/ted/2009/10/source-to-4-flash-iphone-apps.php

Refreshingapps will be keeping up with the mobile side by launching a new site soon so stay tuned for details.

Posted in: Adobe, Business, Code, Conference, Releases

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Business, Code, Conference, Releases 2009-10-05T20:34:40+00:00 Response to ReadWriteWeb article on AIR http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/response_to_readwriteweb_article_on_air/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/response_to_readwriteweb_article_on_air/#When:10:29:30Z Over at ReadWriteWeb there is an article surrounding Adobe AIR focusing on the honeymoon period being over for the framework.

But recently, we’ve begun to question AIR’s longevity. Now don’t get us wrong – many of our favorite apps (TweetDeck, Tumbleweed, Yammer, etc.) are built using Adobe AIR. However, there’s no reason why these apps couldn’t just run in a browser instead…and that might even be a better place for them.

I personally think that the writer does have a point, some of these AIR apps could live in a browser and indeed many of them probably share the same codebase as a standard browser version.

There appears to be a love of all things Google Chrome in the article and comments, I like ReadWriteWeb but comparing Adobe AIR and Google Chrome with Gears is not entirely a like for like comparison.

It’s early days for this technology and yes it has been marketed towards the developers with web skills and not those who ultimately posses the money to create large AIR apps. The eBay desktop AIR application mentioned in the article is an example of where the design and UX can be enhanced by a RIDA (Rich Internet Desktop Application).

RIA’s are only just taking hold in large corporates where the management are people who remember Flash as a technology that kids used to build sites with long preloaders, skip intro links and hard to read text. This is not the case today with the Flash platform.

Adobe AIR performance needs to be addressed, there is now a general consensus of AIR is a resource hog. You only have to look at Twitter to see what the general public are saying about the runtime. Those developers in the know are aware of how to fine tune their AIR apps to maximise memory, especially when idle but it is the wider circle of people creating these apps that don’t optimise then AIR gets a bad name. This is not detracting from the fact that the performance of AIR needs to be much better and leaner. Having the ability to run multiple AIR apps that are running in the background sending notifications syncing data while the user is focused on another task while not hogging CPU and memory is vital.

It’s also my personal view that AIR should have two differing runtime types, widget and full blown app mode these would use different sandboxes and permissions. I know this has been mentioned before but how great would it be to simply click on a AIR widget link in a webpage and have it instantly appear as an AIR widget on your system. A fast seamless user experience without the usual security hassles because they run in a sandbox that is different to fullblown AIR apps.

These AIR widgets could then possibly talk to and launch main AIR apps and even have rich communication with say a Flash or Flex app inside a webpage for updating, retrieving data or similar.

AIR could also benefit from having GPS connectivity with a host system for location based data, yes I appreciate that this is a very complex thing to do and will probably not see the light of day for quite a while. If mobile apps have this functionality then why not AIR apps and widgets running on mobile and netbook pc’s.

Most people have got the AIR runtime because they installed Tweetdeck or another Twitter application, they might not even know they have it! AIR is much more than just Twitter apps just looking through RefreshingApps.com you see the diversity.

In response to the question of do RIA’s have a future or just better browsers, I say that RIA’s are definitely the way forward for certain applications and tasks. HTML 5 is an interesting step forward and with 3D CSS transformations coming (well available now in the nightly release of Webkit) we are going to see richer apps and sites running inside the browser without the Flash plugin. I welcome this BUT the teams at Adobe working on AIR and Flash need to keep ahead of the game, make things leaner and faster. If you can do basic 3D in a browser with very little resource overhead why would you need the Flash plugin?

AIR has so many business advantages over apps running in the browser. The offline capabilities are a prime example not just database access but ability to save and write files to the host machine with a custom file extension, comprehensive drag and drop, system tray and dock notifications the list goes on.

Adobe need to get AIR and ActionScript 3 onto mobile FAST. This is the killer for dev’s and businesses alike. Write once and deploy to set top boxes, mobiles, netbooks etc. is key. BUT it needs to be fast especially on mobile and portable devices, if they release without performance being top then Adobe risk the lifespan of the AIR runtime altogether.

IN the meantime let’s just keep on producing content and apps that people can use TODAY on the desktop with AIR.

[Caveat: I’m an Adobe Community Expert for AIR, however I’m not paid or employed by Adobe ]

Posted in: Adobe, Business, RefreshingApps

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Business, RefreshingApps 2009-07-15T10:29:30+00:00 Flash Catalyst, Flex 4 out on Labs http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/flash_catalyst_flex_4_out_on_labs/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/flash_catalyst_flex_4_out_on_labs/#When:08:08:45Z Great news Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder are not both out of Adobe labs. Get going with next generation designer / developer work flow.

Posted in: Adobe, Releases

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Releases 2009-06-03T08:08:45+00:00 AIR and Flex Tutorial http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/air_and_flex_tutorial/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/air_and_flex_tutorial/#When:09:22:25Z Adobe have posted a good beginners tutorial for Flex and AIR. It’s split into a number of modules and instructions and code are included.

Posted in: Adobe, Code

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Code 2009-05-26T09:22:25+00:00 Adobe AIR is a Webware 100 winner! http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/adobe_air_is_a_webware_100_winner/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/adobe_air_is_a_webware_100_winner/#When:10:23:58Z Adobe AIR has won a Webware 100 award in the Infrastructure & Storage category!

Great to get more exposure for the best RIDA (Rich Internet Desktop Application) platform there is.

Posted in: Adobe, Business

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Business 2009-05-20T10:23:58+00:00 Registration for Adobe MAX LA 2009 is go! http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/registration_for_adobe_max_la_2009_is_go/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/registration_for_adobe_max_la_2009_is_go/#When:12:23:37Z Registration is now open for this years Adobe MAX conference. As we know there is no Max Europe this year which is disappointing but for those who can afford to go to Los Angeles this years MAX is shaping up to be a great conference.

Head on over now to save $200 off the regular price until August.

Posted in: Adobe, Conference

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Conference 2009-05-19T12:23:37+00:00 AIRAppFriday on Twitter http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/airappfriday_on_twitter/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/airappfriday_on_twitter/#When:08:04:14Z Today I started AIRAppFriday on Twitter. So the idea is that every Friday you tweet your favourite AIR application of the week using the hashtag #AIRAppFriday, simple.

So setup a search in your AIR desktop Twitter client or use the search on the Twitter website (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=airappfriday).

Posted in: RefreshingApps

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> RefreshingApps 2009-05-15T08:04:14+00:00 Join in with filing excessive CPU bug in AIR http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/join_in_with_filing_excessive_cpu_bug_in_air/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/join_in_with_filing_excessive_cpu_bug_in_air/#When:21:38:52Z There is common knowledge that AIR apps can sometimes be CPU hogs. Well Grant Skinner has written a great blog post about how an AIR application in Flash that does nothing uses 4% of his new Mackbook pro CPU. It’s worth pointing out that Grant finds this only with Mac and not Windows and it is also seen in the Flash Player.

He is urging you to file this in the bug database at Adobe called Jira, the bug is numbered FP-2009 so do a quick search for that.

In the mean time Grant has created a workaround solution that effectively cuts the framerate of your movie when running in the background. The class (called framerateThrottler) is available here and read the full post over at GSkinner.com.

There is a response from the Adobe AIR team that includes some more performance tuning options available to developers.

Posted in: Code

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Code 2009-05-07T21:38:52+00:00 FlashCamp Birmingham (uk) is go! http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/flashcamp_birmingham_uk_is_go/ http://refreshingapps.com/news/article/flashcamp_birmingham_uk_is_go/#When:11:11:46Z FlashCamp is back in the UK at Birmingham on 16th June 2009 so get on down and register your attendance.

Again there are some great speakers and sponsors for the FREE event that runs from 12:00 until close at 20:00. Covering a variety of topics from Flex custom component creations with Mike Jones (aka Flashgen), there is some skinning with Degrafa and FXG by me (jameswhittaker.com). Some cool 3d from Away 3d creator Rob Bateman and getting started with PureMVC with Simon Bailey.

Keep an eye out for more details on the website. Pass on the message Flashcamp is coming to town.

http://flashcamp.co.uk

Posted in: Adobe, Conference

Advertise here on the RefreshingApps feed and get noticed. Find out more.

]]> Adobe, Conference 2009-05-06T11:11:46+00:00