TheRealTimeWeb.com - Adobe AIR

Multicast Chat Across Devices and Platforms

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:46:00 +0100

In preparation for my session at Streaming Media Europe in a couple of weeks I had a play with the IP multicast feature in Flash today. Tom Krcha posted an excellent example on his blog a few months ago which demos this feature very well.
It's worth pointing out that this code works in a LAN setup, not over the public internet. This also means that Cirrus (aka Stratus) is not required for the P2P introduction - Flash Player can handle this itself on a multicast enabled LAN. Therefore you can try this using the devices on your local network, but not with your friends elsewhere on the net.

I wanted to try Tom's example on my iPad and Nexus One. The phone was easy since it can run Flash Player 10.1 and Tom's example app worked fine there. But what about the iPad?
Since I have got an Apple iOS developer account I am able to use the iPhone packaging feature in Flash CS5 to build iPhone and iPad applications. All I needed to do was to port Tom's Flex example to Flash as using the Flex framework on a device is not the best thing to do - at least not until themobile-optimised Hero SDK ships.

This blog post is therefore just a record to say: it worked and it worked well. Porting took only half an hour, and I then spent another half hour fine tuning a few bits and pieces, nothing major. The photo shows the app running on my Windows 7 netbook, the Nexus One and the iPad. I also had it running on my iMac and in the Flash IDE.

Say what you want about Flash on devices, there's something very cool about getting your code to run so easily in so many places. And remember this app now not only spans devices but also platforms and even runtimes since the iPad app is practically AIR based.

You can download my Flash app including sources here, but note that you need an iOS developer account to compile and install it on an iDevice.

Flash Player and AIR Announced for Android

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:11:00 +0100

As you may already know, the Mobile World Congress kicked off today in Barcelona and it did not take long for the first announcements to hit the interwebs. Adobe has of course a large presence at MWC and today announced support for Flash Player as well as Adobe AIR on Android devices. While we have seen some demos of Flash running on Android already, support for the AIR runtime gives developers yet another option for deployment on mobile devices, besides the traditional Flash content for (mobile) web browsers that is going to hit mobile screen sometime in the first half of 2010. Adobe states that 19 of the top 20 phone OEMs are committed to delivering Flash and expects more than half of all smartphones to ship with Flash Player by the end of 2012. 19 out of 20... can you guess the missing one?
Remember that the upcoming iPhone packager in Flash CS5 is essentially bundling the AIR runtime into a compiled .ipa iPhone application, which means that other platforms which will support AIR natively (such as Android) can be targeted just as easily and in fact easier, using the same code base. Sure, a responsible developer will tweak their application a bit depending on the device they are targeting, but other than that AIR for mobile will be very similar to AIR on the desktop, with all the benefits that this brings. For example differences in APIs between the mobile OSs are abstracted away by AIR, allowing the developer to code using one consistent API - just as we are used to on the desktop where we can build AIR apps that run on Windows, Mac and even Linux without having to worry about the intricacies and differences of different file systems, OS hooks and so on. In short, AIR for mobile will allow developers to deploy what are essentially native mobile applications which the user installs and which are granted the same level of trust than other installed apps. This is different to the content that you may run in your sandboxed mobile browser and Flash Player 10.1.

I'm very exited to see this announcement today, and while I can't say that I'm surprised it's reassuring nevertheless. Flash as a Platform has a lot of life in it yet, despite what some fanatics would have you believe. That said, it could also be make or break time now, and Adobe needs to get their mobile strategy right this time or they will miss the boat. In particular I think that the vision of using a single code base to deploy for web (Flash Player), desktop (AIR) and mobile (Flash Player, AIR for mobile) can be met. Mobile applications are simply too different and require so much specific attention that it is simply not realistic to suggest that one could simply 'compile for mobile' after having built a browser or desktop app.

It's a different story for web and desktop: here we can have a lot of code overlap (at least in my experience) for a two screen approach to work - after all the screen size is a hugely important factor and web and desktop apps normally share the same screen. Maybe a middle ground of a two platform approach would be the way forward: one code base for web and desktop delivered by Flash Player and AIR, and another for mobile (with only minor tweaks needed for each device) utilising Flash Player and AIR for mobile. That's a vision I could buy into, and one that I hope Adobe is aiming for. I much prefer them to under-promise and over-deliver than to do it the other way round.

Suggest Filename and Extension in browseForSave() in AIR

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:37:00 +0100

As if Flash Lite development combined with FMS wasn't enough fun already I decided to start yet another side project, this time using AIR. The idea behind the project is to build (yet another) webcam snapshot tool - but with a twist.

I use Freeagent for my company accounts (which I can highly recommend btw - just note that multiple currency support is in the works and not yet supported - sorry to be harping on about this Olly ;-) and I would like to have a little tool that lets me capture, upload and attach receipts and other paper related snippets to specific transactions. Luckily, Freeagent have a cool API which I think will allow me to achieve what I want.In short, you should eventually load up my AIR app, bring up a list of your company transactions and then by simply holding a receipt in front of the camera and pressing the space bar on your keyboard it will capture, save, upload and attach that image to the selected transaction. That surely must be easier than having to scan, save and upload the same receipt using traditional upload methods.
At worst I'll never finish it and waste a few days of my life but what the heck.

Ok, back on track to finally add some value to this post. While messing around with this application I couldn't quite figure out how in AIR I could pre-populate the File Save-As dialogue. I didn't want to the user to choose just any old name for the file (but they still could if they like to), and I also needed to add the default file extension to the image, in this case .png. So after some Tweeting (thanks @weyert) and Googling I came up with this - dead simple, but as usual only if you know how :-) //called when user presses save button in my app private function onSave(e:MouseEvent):void { //get a reference to the desktop and suggets a filename plus extension var f:File = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath('img.png'); //listen for the select event f.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onBrowse); //open the browse for save dialogue f.browseForSave("Save Image"); } // actually save the image private function onBrowse(e:Event):void { // stuff from other parts of my app var pngenc:PNGEncoder = new PNGEncoder(); var ba:ByteArray = pngenc.encode(bmd); // grab the file that the user chose - hopefully as suggested by me var file:File = File(e.target); var fileStream:FileStream = new FileStream(); try{ fileStream.open(file,FileMode.WRITE); fileStream.writeBytes(ba); //close the file fileStream.close(); } catch(e:Error) { trace(e.message); } }

There. Documented here for your pleasure.
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Microsoft Silverlight vs. Adobe AIR/Flex Debate

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:38:00 +0100

Here's an interesting video of a discussion on RIA technologies including Silverlight, Flex and AIR. Sam Stokes, academic developer/evangelist at Microsoft Corporation and Kevin Hoyt, platform evangelist at Adobe represented the two sides.
You can watch the video here - but be warned, the viewing experience isn't great, especially if you are on a Mac.

Flex 3.0 and AIR 1.0 Released

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:17:00 +0100

The blogosphere is flooded with info on Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 today and I won't add much to the noise apart from pointing you here and here to find out more. Great job Flex team!

Adobe Media Player Prerelease 2 Is Now Live on Labs

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:36:00 +0100

Adobe have just launched the prerelease 2 version of their Adobe Media Player (AMP). This second version brings the Player in line with Beta 3 of AIR, Adobe's cross platform desktop runtime, and it adds a few new features such as H.264 support, hardware acceleration for fullscreen playback as well as new video scaling options during playback.

Adobe Media Player Delayed

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:34:00 +0100

According to Beet.tv, who have a video interview with Chris Hock, the Adobe Media Player will be delayed until next year. A beta is expected this year.
I'm not sure if the player had been announced for this year or not but in any case it's not long now, even if the release is indeed pushed forward a bit.
I have been lucky enough to see some demos of the Adobe Media player and it's a very nice app and worth the wait in any case ;-)

Deeje Cooley: Video Demo of the Adobe Media Player

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:07:00 +0100

Here's another video from video.onflex.org. In it you can see Deeje Cooley demoing some more of the upcoming Adobe Media Player, codenamed Philo. Watch the video here.

Enjoy.

Nice Writeup on Apollo at The Register

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:14:00 +0100

It's great to see a publication such as The Register identify Apollo as a useful alternative to traditional web apps. I also love the subheader... :-)
Read the article here.

Apollo Video Chat

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:34:00 +0100

Here's a video chat app (uses FMS) that I ported to Apollo. It's a in essence a Flex application that uses none of Apollo's functionality but merely wraps the my Flex app that's online here into an .air installer. The Apollo client connects to the same server as the browser based app which is kinda cool.

Here's the Apollo runtime which you need to run my app (Win or Mac).

Here's the Apollo installer for my app.

What's cool to note is that I managed to port what's essentially a browser app onto the desktop in something like 30 mins. The code changes were almost non-existend.
You *will* get a warning with this installer that the app may access your file system (as any executable may do). However this app does not.
To uninstall you can run the installer again and then choose uninstall or remove it via the normal means (add/remove programs if you're on Win). Not tested on Mac but with a bit of luck it'll run there too I think ;-)

Apollo Now Live on Labs

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:39:00 +0100

Haven't you heard? The Apollo runtime, SDK and documentation is now available on Adobe Labs.
This is a pre-release and as such targeted at developers. What is Apollo? According to Adobe it is 'the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.'
Enjoy.

Breezo: Apollo Explained

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 13:35:00 +0100

Here is what I think is the best overview and explanation of Apollo to date. I myself have struggled to fully understand what Apollo is, what it will be capable of and how it will help me as a developer. This Breezo sums Apollo up very nicely. You should seek about 15 minutes into the presentation if you want to go straight to the Apollo content. Exciting times ahead! I love the idea of being able to build desktop apps using web technologies - maybe that's because web technologies is all I know ;-) I feel overwhelmed, in a good way. Not only are we being handed Flex2 and Flash9/AS3 but Apollo is also scheduled to be released for preview on Labs later this year(!) with a version 1.0 out in 2007. And who knows, maybe Adobe is working on FMS3. And if they are I would bet they will add AS3 support. One can wish.